Window treatments for a bedroom

Drape & Dawn earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no extra cost to you. It does not change what we recommend. Full disclosure.

In June, sunrise in much of the country is before 5:30am, and a bedroom that is not properly dark will wake a light sleeper regardless of when they went to bed. The fix has two parts and they are not equally important.

The mounting does most of the work. A rod 8 to 12 inches wider than the window, mounted 4 to 6 inches above the frame or higher, with returns that carry the panel back to the wall at each end. That closes the side path, which is where most of the light enters. A wrap-around rod builds the returns in.

Then the fabric. A triple-weave blackout panel, floor length, with combined panel width at least twice the window width. If you already have blackout curtains and the room is still bright, do not buy different curtains — read how to fix curtain light gaps first. Picks are in best blackout curtains.

Cold glass generates a convection current: room air touches the pane, cools, sinks, and slides across the floor. In a bedroom that lands on whoever is nearest the window, and it is why one side of a bed can feel noticeably colder than the other.

A blackout cellular shade fitted tightly in the recess is the best single answer, because it traps still air against the glass and darkens at the same time. A thermal curtain helps too, and helps much more if it is sealed at the top with a pelmet and reaches the floor. More in best insulated cellular shades and the drafts hub.

Any covering that gives daytime privacy by being brighter outside than in — sheers, light-filtering shades, mirrored film — reverses once your lamps are on. In a bedroom that matters more than in most rooms. Anything opaque solves it, which means a blackout curtain or a blackout shade is already doing this job for you. If you want daylight privacy as well, a top-down bottom-up shade covers the lower window and keeps the sky. See privacy at night without losing daylight.

A blackout cellular shade inside the recess, and a blackout curtain on a wide wrap-around rod outside it. The shade covers the glass and insulates; the curtain covers the edges and adds a second still-air layer. Together they get a bedroom properly dark, noticeably warmer, and private at any hour — and the pair typically costs less than a single made-to-measure shade with side channels.

Rod width, rod height, total panel width, drop from the rod. Four numbers, two minutes, and they determine which products are even available to you. How to measure for curtains has the sequence; what size curtain rod do I need has the table.