Blackout Day & Night Blinds: Compared Across UK Retailers

7 blackout day & night blinds, £140-£453 for a standard window (around 1200×1200 mm). Enter your exact window below - each price updates to your size, and we move you to the right size band if you go outside this one.

Blackout fabric is woven tightly or given a coated backing so daylight cannot pass through the material itself. The catch is that a blind is not a sealed box: light still leaks in around the edges, where the fabric has to sit a little narrower than the recess to move freely, and along the top of the roll or stack. Even a good blackout fabric in an ordinary recess leaves a visible glow around the edges, so it is honest to think of it as deep shade rather than total darkness.

Where that edge light matters most - nurseries, shift workers sleeping in the day, media rooms, bright south-facing bedrooms - the answer is to seal the sides. Look for side channels or blackout tracks, a framed style such as perfect-fit or a roof blind held in channels, or a face-fixed blind cut to overlap the reveal. One real limit: slatted and louvred blinds (venetian, vertical) and layered day-and-night blinds cannot truly black out, because the slat tilts, cord holes and sheer bands always pass some light however dark the fabric. For genuine darkness, rollers, lined romans, channelled pleated and roof blinds get closest.

Two things help when you are choosing. The darkness comes from the coating or the tight weave, not the shade, so a pale blackout fabric blocks just as well as a dark one - pick the colour you want and let the cloth do the work. And blackout is really about light rather than warmth or noise, though a dense fabric does take a little of the chill and the echo out of a room as a welcome side benefit. If a blind is sold as a blackout venetian or a blackout vertical, read that as the darkest the style manages, not a promise of a dark room.

If a properly dark room is the goal, two fittings make the biggest difference: choosing a face fit cut to overlap the opening by a good margin on every side, or adding side channels that the fabric runs inside. Both close down the edge gap an ordinary recess blind leaves, and they matter far more to the result than the grade of fabric on its own. Measure for that overlap before you order, because a blackout blind cut to the bare opening will always leave the thin line of light at the edges you were trying to be rid of.

A day-and-night blind, also called a vision or zebra blind, is made of two layers of striped fabric - alternating sheer and solid bands - that slide over one another. Line the solid bands up and you get shade and privacy; slide them so the sheer bands meet and you get an open, screened view; stop anywhere in between to dial in exactly the light you want. That one control covers a lot of ground, which is why it suits living rooms, kitchens and any room where the right amount of light changes through the day.

Because there is always a sheer band in play, a day-and-night blind dims a room rather than blacking it out, and after dark with the lights on you remain visible through the sheer stripes, so it is not the choice for a bedroom that needs to be dark. It wipes clean easily, and PVC-friendly versions cope with kitchens and bathrooms. With more fabric and mechanism than a plain roller, it costs a little more than a roller of the same fabric and size.

The striped layers run on a single continuous chain, so you set the light level in one smooth movement, and a headrail cassette tidies the roll away at the top for a finished look. Cordless and motorised versions are worth seeking out where a child-safe operation matters, and wipe-clean fabrics make the style practical in a kitchen or a busy family room.