Magical Thinking Duvet; Kantha Blanket; Lulu & Georgia Lamp
Our bedroom is very, very light. Very bright. I like this, generally speaking, both because sun-filled rooms make me happy, and because being woken up by children wayyyy before you want to be awake is easier when you’re not laying in a dark, cozy cave.
Kendrick disagrees with me on this point. He has been annoyed by the brightness of our bedroom for going on two years now, but excuse me, I was not about to hang massive, heavy blackout curtains in our breezy, poolside room. I love him and all, but one must draw the line somewhere.
That said, the fact that we only had sheer curtains on our sliding doors and only a set of ancient, barely-functioning brown blinds above our bed was getting…awkward. Especially during our many pool parties this summer, when I found myself laying on the floor of our bedroom so that I could change into a bathing suit without giving our friends and their assorted young children front-row seats to a decidedly adult show. So finally I decided to look into solutions, and it was then that I remembered them.
THE BABY ROOM BLACKOUT SHADES.
Wayyyyy back in the day when our daughter still slept – this has since stopped happening – I worked with Smith & Noble on a project* where I attempted to darken her nursery so she would sleep through the sunrise. The solution ended up being these cool dual-view honeycomb shades: there’s one layer that’s sheer and lets in all the light while still giving you privacy…and then a second layer that completely blacks any vestige of sunlight, even in the middle of the day. And they’re pretty, and streamlined, and polished-looking – not heavy in the slightest.
So here’s what I did.
I can’t get my children out of my bedroom anymore, which means it looks like this.
Above the bed in our bedroom, I installed a dual-view honeycomb shade similar to the one that we’d had in our New York house. This is what it looks like when the sheer panel is pulled down – when the blackout panel is pulled up, the room is completely dark.
Since the patio doors already have sheer curtains that basically do the same thing as a sheer blind, all we needed was a blackout shade, so I had a vertical slider installed to darken the room completely at night. It’s AMAZING. (I hung the curtains back up after this photo was taken.)
This is what the dual-view shades look like when they’re pulled into the blackout position.
The kids’ rooms and my office also had those same heavy, brown blinds, so I swapped them out for dual-view honeycomb shades as well.
Here are the dual-view shades in my office, pulled into the sheer position.
Next, I’m planning to install a roller shade (for nighttime privacy) on our living room window, which faces out to the street, and put solar shades (which filter the light and offer daytime privacy) in our kitchen.
But back to the important part: Our bedroom, and Kendrick’s associated happiness level. I think it’s safe to say he loves it, because blackout shades + cozy blankets + a fan for white noise apparently mean that he doesn’t move a muscle before 10AM on weekend mornings. (We’re going to need to discuss that one, but in the meantime he can make it up to me in coffee and jewelry form.)
*This isn’t a sponsored post, but a media discount was provided by the brand.
