"Travis Jordan" wrote in message
. ..
If you want to keep the room really dark you'll need opaque blackout
blinds.

If appearance isn't an issue and you just want to make the room dark all
the time, line the inside of the windows with aluminum foil.

Back in the late 1970s, I was a 3rd shift computer operator... I wanted to
darken my room, so I tried various techniques... I tried putting styrofoam
insulation sheets up in the windows, cut to the exact size of the window
opening... Turns out that they still transmit quite a bit of light in bright
sunlight... Putting a couple of coats of latex black paint on them with a
roller eventually got them to the point where they were bearable... If I
needed to do it these days, I would take two sheets of the styrofoam
insulation, sandwich an aluminum foil layer between them and then paint them
white on the outside so that would look somewhat like curtains... Maybe cut
them a bit larger than the window opening and put a wooden frame around them
so that it would look like window trim and hang them over the window
opening... That way, the mini blinds would still be visible from the outside
and what might be visible between the blinds would be white like the
curtains... Hell, if you want to get fancy about it, have large photo
mounted on the cover so that it looks like you're looking out at a
particular scene... One window could have a mountain landscape and the other
one, a beach view... Probably beats the 'ell out of the view of your
neighbor's yard anyway... grin