DIY Blackout Shades for sliding doors, quick and easy

Early Sunrise Sucks Now that I can sleep in

The days are going to keep getting longer for another month and my toddlers have no idea. I triple wrapped the window in their room with blackout shades when they came home from the hospital. I’ve got no room in my life for early-bird twin two year olds.

Behind the gold panel – which is also a blackout shade – are TWO other layers of blackout curtains. Their room is a cave but they literally ONLY sleep in there.

This is the first time in years I haven’t needed to get up at six am. The earlier and earlier sunrise started disturbing MY sleep last month. The morning light leaking in between the curtain rod and the wall wakes me up despite two layers of blackout shades across our sliding doors. So I worked out a simple and quick solution for blacking out the glass on the sliding doors – that does not impact the functioning of the door.

Blackout Sliding Doors

Materials:

White blackout shade panels, peel and stick roll of VELCRO (buy the real stuff, it’s better) glass cleaner, yardstick, marker, scissors, and an iron.

Steps

Step 1 – Measure your glass. Mine were exactly the right width I could buy two panels and cut them each in half longways to make four panels.

Step 2 – Cut for length. Measure and mark both long edges and use a yardstick to draw a straight line between them. Cut along the line.

I measured both sides of the curtain for length and then used a straight edge to connect the two marks to make sure the cut was nice and square.

Step 3 – Measure your Velcro for the width and cut to width for the top and bottom of each panel.

Step 4 – Carefully peel and stick the hook side of the velcro to the top of your panel keeping it as straight along your cut edge as possible.

Using Velcro brand velcro is the way to go

Step 5 – Working on top of a towel, use a medium dry iron on the opposite side of the panel to set the velcro adhesive. You don’t have to do this, but it will stick better if you heat it up and really push when you iron it.

Using my favorite tiny little travel iron set on medium heat to set the adhesive on the blackout curtain.

Step 6 – Clean the top and bottom edges of your glass with a glass cleaner – I used some alcohol based lens wipes – while you are at it just clean the whole window.

Step 7 – Carefully peel and stick the loop side of the velcro along the bottom and top edges of your glass. Press firmly. I used a roller to really make sure the adhesive bonded to the glass.

After cleaning I carefully applied the velcro to the window. Picking a color that matched the window frame makes it essentially invisible when the blackout shades are not up.

Step 8 – Stick the shades up on the window. Boom you are done.

Unintentional Side Effect – of blacking out the doors.

That’s it – It turns our room into a cave when they are up but there is an awesome unintentional side effect. It stays massively cooler in our room. I keep them up most of the time because it’s saving us so much money on our AC, it’s not funny. When we want more natural light in the room we let them puddle on the floor.

We share in Fort Birthday