Room darkening shades

Has anyone tried installing room darkening shades in order to get your LOs to sleep longer for naps and in the early morning hours? Did it help?

 

I have tried them, but sadly it did not help much. Usually only about an extra 1/2 hour in the am, and it did not help at all with naps.

But you never know it might work for your little ones.

 

We are in the process of doing that right now. If only I could find the time to hang them up...

 

I attached the black out fabric to my son's curtains and it made a huge difference - he was waking up at 5 and now we usually get until at least 7.
I bought the fabric at Joann's

 

Yes, for us it did. We got them at Home Depot.

 

We do darken their room at naptime, they sleep ok with it. It always worked a treat for my older two, even now when they have the occasional nap It really calms them and sets the mood for sleep.

 

it works great in our house - we just threw a dark coloured sheet over their window though rather than buying anything. it doesn't look great, but it does do the trick!

 

We bought the blackout curtains. I picked them up fairly cheaply at Walmart (I saw them at KMart and Target, too). It seems to help our DS sleep a little later in the morning.

 

we installed the room darkening shades about a month ago, and its made a big difference (positive) for naptime and first part of bedtime (now that's it light out when they go to bed). The better sleep could be attributed to them just being a little older, but I think having the room darkened for sleep time has really helped us.

 

Our babies are still in the "I love black and white things!" stage (2mo), so room darkening blinds are good and bad. The positive is that they do make the room darker. The negative is that some light seeps through once the sun is really up, creating light/dark stripes. These really stimulate the boys, to the point sometimes they just want to lay on our bed and stare at them. They cry if they can't see the blinds and it works against getting them to go back to sleep. They should grow out of it, though.

 

Same in this house! The window looks apalling but it really does help, the darker the better for my girls otherwise they just get too distracted to sleep.

 

I was wondering about this too - but wondered how would affect thier ability to sleep when in places that they could not have a dark room, say when traveling or whatever?? Any thoughts??

 

[quote name='Shelly's twins' date='03 August 2009 - 03:18 PM' timestamp='1249334327' post='1413236']
I was wondering about this too - but wondered how would affect thier ability to sleep when in places that they could not have a dark room, say when traveling or whatever?? Any thoughts??
[/quote]

this is a good point - my girls do not sleep nearly as well when we travel because there's more light. naps are okay, but they usually turn into early morning wakers because they wake as the sun comes up. i've started taking our dark sheet with us.

 

the curtains helped Big time. Not only for light, but also for sound. Their room faces the busy street. And you know how loud early am garbage trucks can be.
We just went away for the weekend & they did fine without the darkness we get at home.