An upper floor bedroom with one big wall of glass and a city view. Ceiling mounted blackout drapery that closes the room down at night and stacks clear of the view by day.
How do you black out a floor to ceiling bedroom window in El Cajon?
Hang the drapery from the ceiling and let it overlap the wall on both sides. In this El Cajon bedroom, blackout drapery runs from a track at the ceiling line, so the panels cover the whole window plus a strip of wall past each edge.
The window is one tall sheet of glass from the floor almost to the ceiling. Just outside sits a narrow balcony with a glass railing, and past that the view runs over treetops and rooftops to the city. At dusk the sky turns orange and the room glows. By day, the same glass pours light straight onto the bed.
A shade inside that frame would leave a bright sliver on every side. Drapery fixes it.
When the panels close, they meet in the middle and wrap past the frame, so the light has no straight path to the pillow and the room goes properly dark even with the sun up. We plan a lot of bedrooms like this one as part of our window treatments in El Cajon, where inland afternoons run hot and a wall of glass can turn a bedroom into a sunroom.
Should blackout drapery hang from the ceiling or from a rod above the window?
From the ceiling, when the glass runs that high. Here the track is mounted right at the ceiling, so the fabric starts above the glass and nothing glows over the top.
A rod on the wall a few inches above the frame works on a standard window. On this one it can't. There is almost no wall above the glass to hold brackets, and a rod hung lower would leave a band of bare window at the top, which is exactly where the brightest light comes in.
The panels fall straight and stop just above the floor. Too short and light leaks under the hem. Too long and the fabric puddles and drags every time you pull it.
We measure each panel to the finished floor, not the subfloor, because a fraction of an inch decides whether the hem looks tailored or sloppy. Our blackout drapery is built to that exact drop, with a blackout lining sewn behind the face fabric so the room side stays soft.
What color blackout drapery works in a bedroom with a city view?
Something quiet and a little darker than the walls. These panels are a soft charcoal with a woven, linen look texture, close in tone to the gray bedding and a few steps deeper than the pale walls.
Dark fabric does two jobs here. At night, with the panels closed, it turns into one calm wall behind the bed. During the day the panels stack open at each side, and those two dark columns frame the glass like a picture, so your eye goes straight to the trees and the skyline instead of to the fabric.
White drapery would have looked washed out against that much bright glass. It would also show every handprint on the leading edge.
Texture matters too. A flat, shiny blackout fabric looks like a hotel room, while a woven face with a little slub in it feels like a home. If you also want daytime privacy without going dark, add sheer drapery on a second track behind the blackout panels. Close the sheers at noon and you still see out.
Is blackout drapery better than blackout roller shades for a bedroom?
For a window this size, usually yes. Drapery covers the edges a shade cannot, and it stacks off to the side instead of rolling into a thick tube across the top of the view.
Blackout roller shades are great on smaller bedroom windows. Mounted inside a frame, though, they leave a thin light gap at each side, and on a wall of glass that gap runs the full height of the room. Side channels can close it. On a window this wide the shade gets heavy and the fabric roll gets bulky, and that is a lot of hardware for one opening.
There are still good reasons to pick a roller shade, such as a window directly behind a headboard or a tight corner where panels have nowhere to stack. Sometimes we use both in the same house.
If a tall window is waking you up too early, book a free in-home consultation and we will bring blackout fabrics to hold up against your own glass.