Before- no curtains

After- with curtains

I am a suuuper light sleeper and have always been sensitive to light. I usually sleep with a mask over my face but when I moved into a new apartment in 2024, this just wasn't enough. Though my blinds offered enough coverage against city night lights, they let in a significant amount of light once the sun rose. I could have covered up my windows with boards but I also really enjoy the natural light when I am awake so I needed a solution that was easy to remove during the day. I decided to make a magnetic curtain. This is a single curtain that has magnets around the perimeter inside the fabric. I simply attach the curtain to magnets on the outside of my window frame.

I bought blackout fabric specifically which is actually pretty cheap and easy to find. I bought two yards from JoAnn for $5.39 a yard on sale. Since the fabric is insulated, this means that is also helps block out outside noise a little and keeps the cold out.

The first step was to lay out all of the fabric and mark measurements. It is very important that the fabric fits in the window frame nearly perfectly in order to best block out any leaking light. Special thank you to Binx for double-checking my work.

Once I had the two pieces of fabric measured out, I placed a bunch of pins around the perimeter of the fabric. The fabric was a bit slippery and I didn't want it to move while I sewed. Binx, again, was the supervisor for this step.

I sewed the perimeter of the fabric with a large seem allowance of 3/4 inch. This way, the magnets would have two layers of fabric on each side. The magnets are very strong and this helps dampen them a little.

These are the magnets I used. I have a big window so I used 10 magnets in the curtain and 10 against the window frame-- totaling in 20. I cleaned the window frame with rubbing alcohol and then stuck these to the window frame with the included adhesive. These magnets and they're adhesive are pretty strong. I've had these curtains for months and they have not fallen at all.

This is a placeholder picture until I can take a picture of the window frame.

An aspect of this project that is quite tricky, is making sure that the magnets inside the curtain have the correct orientation in order to snap onto the magnets along the window frame. An easy solution to this is to test the magnets orientation ahead of time, and then indicate the correct side and the up-and-down orientation with a sharpie face.

To insert the magnets, I actually seem-ripped small portions of the perimeter that I sewed and then I sewed a small square around them to hold them into place. This is the best solution I could think of that would minimize the amount of time the magnets spent near my sewing machine. Since they are powerful, I did not want them to mess up the lower mechanics of my machine.

My finishing touch to the curtain was to make iron-on labels with my Cricut. This has made it significantly easier to identify which side is the inward facing side and which end goes in which corner.