Blackout Blinds
People buy blackout blinds for a variety of different reasons. If you're a night shift worker, have young children, have a street lamp right in front of your house, have a south facing bedroom that bakes in summer, or even if you're simply one of those people who just can't sleep if the sun's still showing, then you'll have a need for blackout blinds.
Nightshift workers suffer from having their body clock disrupted and trying to sleep during the day doesn't help. As long as there's daylight about your body will be telling you that you should be up and about. Closing the curtains may help a bit but the light levels are usually still to high to fool the body. A good blackout blind will reduce the light down to night time levels helping your body to switch off and sleep.
If you have a baby or young children that need to sleep in the daytime you'll find that cutting out the sunlight will allow them to settle down with much fewer distractions. The same applies in summer when the days are longer and you have to put your children to bed when the sun is still shining. Blackout blinds will help distract them from the thought that they could still up and about and playing.
During the summer another problem can arise in south facing rooms on hot days. The temperatures here can build up to very uncomfortable levels very quickly and even with a window open they can still remain too hot and stuffy to use for quite awhile. Blackout blinds don't just block out light they'll also block out heat. So if you're out at work all day, so you can't leave windows open, you can drop down the blinds and return to a house that is not a suffocating oven. Conversely blackout blinds are good at retaining heat within a room during the winter months.
But it's not just the sun that can be a problem. If you're unlucky enough to have a street lamp located just outside of your house you probably don't appreciate the bright orange glow it gives out all night. Or perhaps you have neighbour whose incredibly bright security light goes on and off all night as the local cats walk along their fence. Both of these can result in disrupted sleep and a blackout blind would be the ideal solution to these types of problems.
Although there are people who seem to be able to sleep through any amount of bright light streaming through the window, most of us can't. So if someone in your family isn't sleeping as well as they should blackout blinds may just be what they need to help them block out the world and get some decent sleep.