Blackout Curtains for Darker Winter Mornings

It’s the first Monday in November, your alarm is set for 7:00, and at 6:15 the bedroom is already going pale around the edges of the curtains. You roll toward the wall, and the light finds you there too.

Daylight saving time ends on November 1, and across most of the US the sunrise jumps about an hour earlier on the clock overnight. That makes the window the loudest alarm clock in the house, and nobody set it. It rings at sunrise whether you’re ready or not, and for a lot of people, sunrise now lands before the alarm they did set.

A good blackout curtain is how you unplug it. Below are eight picks, sorted by what kind of room you’re trying to keep asleep, and the one we’d buy first. All eight were live Amazon listings when we checked on October 19, 2026. Amazon shows its own current prices, so you’ll find those there rather than here.

Why the alarm still rings around the edges

Blackout fabric stops light passing through the curtain. Light going around it is a separate problem, and it’s usually the one that wakes you: a bright line down each side, a glow over the top of the rod, a stripe across the floor.

Two habits quiet most of it. Hang the rod several inches wider than the window frame on each side and a few inches above it, so the panels overlap the wall when they’re closed. And buy enough width that the closed curtains still have some gather in them (a pair stretched flat across the glass can gap at the middle the first time it’s tugged shut).

A blackout curtain only darkens the room as well as it covers the window.

One more thing worth knowing before you shop. “Blackout” on a listing can mean almost anything. Several popular velvet curtains sold as blackout put their own light blocking at 65% to 90% further down the page, which is a snooze button and nothing more. Every curtain below claims 100% in its listing except one, and we say so when we get there.

The pair we’d start with

Picture a bedroom window from the sidewalk at night: plain white curtains, the same as every other window on the street. Behind them, the room is dark enough to sleep through a sunrise.

The NICETOWN 100% blackout pair does that trick with a sewn-in black liner behind a pure white face. Each panel is 52 by 84 inches, two to a pack, with silver grommets (1.6 inches inside) that slide easily on a standard rod. The listing calls it two layers of triple weave fabric and says it helps with heat, cold and street noise too.

The care instructions are a little funny: NICETOWN says the best washing is no washing, and if you must, hand wash in cold water. That’s fine for a curtain that mostly hangs there. If we were setting up one bedroom for the darkest possible November, this is where we’d start, because it darkens the room without making the window look like it’s hiding something.

For a room that should still feel soft

Blackout curtains have a reputation for looking like a hotel room, heavy and shiny and a little sad. A linen texture fixes most of that.

The MIULEE blackout linen pair is a faux linen (it’s polyester) in natural beige, 52 by 84 inches per panel, with eight grommets each. The listing says it blocks 100% of light and calls out late sleepers and shift workers by name. Picture it in a bedroom with a pale wood bed frame and white sheets, where it reads like a regular linen curtain until the sun comes up and nothing happens.

It ships folded, so expect creases. MIULEE suggests a warm or steam iron, and a low tumble dry if needed.

The tailored one

Grommet curtains have a casual, rippled top. Pinch pleats look like someone measured the window and had them made, which is the look most people want and few people want to pay for.

The MIULEE pinch pleat blackout pair is a 30% linen, 70% polyester blend over a thick white blackout lining, and the listing claims it blocks 100% of sunlight. Each 40 by 84 inch panel has seven permanent pleats and uses 1.6 times its width in fabric, so it hangs full instead of flat. The pleats are steam set, and a small weight in each bottom corner keeps the hem straight. The box includes 20 hooks, 20 clips and 20 rings, so it works on a rod, with ring clips or on a track.

Cold machine wash, low tumble dry. Two 40 inch panels cover 80 inches, so measure a wide window before you commit; a big one may need two packs. This is the pick we’d choose for a primary bedroom where the curtains are part of the decorating.

For the coldest window in the house

Every bedroom in winter has one window you notice from the bed, a slow draft on your face by 5am. Velvet is the curtain for that window.

Joydeco’s velvet pair is one of the few velvets we found that claims 100% blackout. It’s a three layer fabric, 52 by 84 inches per panel, in black, with a rod pocket and back tabs so you can hang it either way. Joydeco says it holds heat in during winter and blocks some outside noise, and you’d expect heavy velvet to muffle the street a little, which is one less thing ringing at 6am.

Two caveats. The listing warns that velvet can show a silvery sheen at certain angles, and black velvet is a strong look in a small room (Joydeco sells other colors). It machine washes, but don’t wring it, and use a steamer for wrinkles.

If the room has to be bright at noon

Some bedrooms pull double duty. There’s a desk in the corner, or it’s the only room with good afternoon light, and keeping blackout curtains shut all day sounds grim.

The INLINAS pair sews a sheer overlay onto a blackout layer, in beige, 52 by 84 inches per panel with grommet tops. Close them at night and the blackout layer does the work; push them open and the sheer part still softens the light and blocks the view from the street. It’s machine washable polyester.

The listing doesn’t put a number on how much light it blocks, so we’d treat it as the compromise pick. It’s for a bedroom that needs to feel bright at noon and dim at 6am, which may describe more bedrooms than the pure blackout pairs do.

If you already love your curtains

Maybe the curtains are fine. You picked them, they match the bedding, and the only thing wrong with them is that they let the morning in.

A liner fixes that without starting over. The Chyhomenyc blackout liners come as two greyish white panels, each 50 by 80 inches, with 16 tabs and 17 rings included. The listing says they work behind grommet curtains with eight grommets, or on a second rod behind rod pocket curtains. They claim 100% blackout, and they go in the washer on cold and gentle, then a low dryer.

The 80 inch length means a liner sits a little shorter than an 84 inch curtain, so it should stay hidden above the curtain’s hem.

Closing the gaps

The edges decide whether you wake at 6:15 anyway, so they get their own section.

The Amazon Basics room darkening rod curves back to the wall at both ends, so the curtains wrap around the sides of the window instead of leaving a lit gap where the rod meets the bracket. It adjusts from 48 to 88 inches, it’s black metal with a 5/8 inch rod, and the listing says it holds up to 16 pounds. Wall mount hardware comes in the box.

For the darkest possible room, put something inside the frame too. Redi Shade’s paper shades are black pleated paper, 36 by 72 inches, in a pack of six. You trim one to fit, it goes up without a drill, and the listing says it blocks 99% of light. It’s cordless, with clips to hold it raised. On its own it’s a fine stopgap for a rental or a nursery while you wait on curtains. Behind any of the curtains above, it’s the closest you’ll get to a room that has no idea what time it is.

What we’d buy

For most bedrooms, we’d buy the NICETOWN white pair and the wraparound rod together and call it done. That combination handles light through the fabric and light around the sides, and from the doorway the room still looks like a bedroom. For a bedroom where the curtains are on display, swap in the MIULEE pinch pleats. If the window is drafty, the velvet. If you already own curtains you like, the liner, and save the rest of the budget.

We’d skip blackout velvet that only claims 70% or 80% on its own listing, however good it looks. It’ll dim the room, but it won’t keep the sunrise out.

None of this fixes the alarm you did set (or the snooze button you’ll keep hitting). Some Saturday in December, though, you’ll wake up on your own, roll over, and the clock will say 8:40, with the room still dark enough to argue for ten more minutes.