Having a good night’s sleep helps you become a better person, or bear, or perhaps just a bearable person. Why? Well, sufficient sleep makes you less cranky.
Whether you get a good night’s sleep depends on many factors such as whether you’re sleeping in the dark, if it’s noisy, or simply because you have a baby. Luckily, there are solutions to further improve your quality of sleep.
When I was browsing for something to help me sleep better, I was amazed to find the Sleepout Curtain on Kickstarter. Not by the product, but the fact that people would actually pay for something like this.
What is it
Sleepout Curtain is a portable blackout curtain that designed to improve your sleeping quality. Studies have shown that we sleep better in the complete darkness. No wonder wise humans choose to sleep at night!
They claims to be the first portable blackout curtain that can be installed on windows in seconds, and blocks out light bleeds to make any room 100% dark.
Ok, sounds cool, but aren’t eye masks more convenient?
Who is it for
Sleepout Curtain is meant for people who want to sleep in total darkness and have a better sleep.
I love how people like to make everything portable nowadays. But portable curtains? How often do you sleep in a different place to justify getting and carrying a portable curtain? Even if you’re renting or staying in a hostel, you don’t really need a portable curtain.
Eye masks happen to be more portable too.
What problem does it solve
Ok, this reminds me of a joke. If someone walks in when you are taking a shower, what is the first thing you should cover? Are you thinking of any part of your body? Wrong!
The answer is their eyes! Duh!
The point I’m trying to make here is, if you want to prevent light from entering your eyes while you sleep, eye masks will suffice. But if you’re trying to get better sleepy, you might want to also consider how you wake up. Even if you slept in the dark, if you don’t wake up naturally you might wake up feeling like you didn’t get a good sleep.
This is why smart curtains are so popular. I use a SwitchBot Curtain so that it automatically closes my curtains when it’s bed time, and opens them in the morning. Let the sun shine into your bedroom, and enter your eyes at least 30 to 45 minutes before you wake up so that your body can start to prepare you to wake up.
Those of you who have tried this would know how refreshing it is to wake up naturally to a sunny morning. So I’d say Sleepout Curtain could potentially solve part of the problem, but if you end up sleeping in because the room stays dark, you might wake up feeling tired rather than refreshed.
Is it innovative
If you subscribe to the belief that your whole body needs to be in the dark, not just your eyes, I can suggest a few options for you.
To sleep well at home, buy a common blackout curtain that doesn’t need to be portable. You can use get adhesive strips to seal off any light leaks, if any.
When you’re on the road, it makes more sense to just stuff a sleeping eye mask in your luggage than to carry around a portable curtain. The eye mask will more than make up for any inadequacies you might find in your hotel room.
That said, hotels should come with decent curtains that keeps the room dark. If the room you stay in happens to have poor curtains, leave a bad review or call room service.
I’m surprised that, during the development of this project, no one ever thought that eye masks would work better than this product.
Is it worth it
You probably guessed my answer. Even if you got the Sleepout Curtain launch day special price, you’ll still need to pay $65. For a sheet of black cloth.
How much for an eye mask, you ask? For less than $15, you can get a 100% blackout eye mask. It achieves the same goal in an easier and cheaper way. Come on, would you prefer to carry a curtain around or an eye mask?
What if you just want a curtain that blocks out the light? Will Sleepout Curtain be a good buy?
It’s still a no. After you do a quick research, you’ll find that you can get one at $20 to $40.
Not convinced? Well, go ahead. I’ll wear my eye mask on the flight. Let’s see how you use the Sleepout Curtain on the aeroplane. Oh wait, they provide baskets on the flights, don’t they?
Are there any alternatives
Should I say it one more time? Eye masks! They are cheaper, come in more choices, and are easier to use. To be honest, I don’t get the appeal of this product. But when I saw that over 1,500 people have backed Sleepout Curtain on Kickstarter, I started to question whether I’m the weird one.
Even though I don’t get their product ideas, I will still give them the credit for trying to let more people know that sleeping in complete darkness helps with our circadian cycles. However, I would like you to pause and think about the source of light that intrudes in our nights the most. Our smartphones.
Research have shown that avoiding the light from your phone helps you to sleep better at night. Can the Sleepout Curtain block the light of your phone? Nope. But an eye mask can.
Conclusion
Sleepout Curtain tries to tackle a problem, but it only seems to deal with half the problem. There are solutions to the other half. So do you need Sleepout Curtain to solve this problem? Well, you can do what it does with a good blackout curtain and some adhesive.
Sure, it won’t be as fast and the setup would definitely not be portable. Perhaps the question you need to ask yourself is whether you need a portable curtain. That’s something I can’t even wrap my head around. Is it a human thing that bears would never comprehend?
A recent study even showed the a correlation between the level of night time light you are exposed to and depression. Thus, I finally identified the cause of my depression: moonlight always leaks into my den!
Do they make curtains for caves? Or eye masks for bears?
Sleep tight!
Hi, I’m Rainee.
I’m a reindeer that identifies as a bear. I’m the Critical Bear that does standup comedy.
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