Bed Shades

I made this partial bed shades, because my girlfriend and me have very different sleep cycles, so she is grumpy with me when I keep the lights on late into the night and I complain, when she turns the lights on early in the morning.

To me, this bed shades are very calming to lie under, it's just feels very cozy.

It would be interesting to find out, whether the bed shades can be used to battle insomnia in places, where the sun only sets for a very short time.

What I didn't use it for so far, is lying down under it with someone, so that one person can stand up and turn the lights on, with out disturbing the other. For that, the space created under it feels a bit to narrow, when applied on a one person bed.

1 big carton

wood glue

tape

1 to 2 blankets

scissors

1 bed with a surrounding frame

Cut 2 broad stripes of cardboard, that are broad enough to bend them in the middle and push them into the edges of your bed, so that they go around the corners of your mattress. The stripes should, or later high enough to comfortably lie under a blanket when it is put over them.

Cut 2 stripes of cardboard to about the length, that you want to cover with the shades.

The cardboard stripes will later be folded to form corners, as seen in the picture above.

Cut the cardboard in to to the point, where you want the corner to be.

Use wood glue to and make a few wavy lines on the sides, where you want to glue parts together, this helps to cover a larger area.

You can fix the parts you want to glue together with clothes pegs, until the glue has dried.

Fold each of the cut in stripes so that they form a corner and glue the overlapping parts together.

Make sure that you have two invers parts of each sort, that is where the corner points to opposite sites.

Put the big corners around the corners of your bed.

Glue the small corners to the big ones, extending them forwards.

Stabilize the distance between the upper edge of the construction with tape.

Optionally glue a back wall from cardboard on, but more blanked will do as well.

Put a blanket over the construction, so that it barely touches the mattress.

If you want to have a little more stability, you can add the scratchy part of velcro fastener to the top of the under construction.

Lift the blanket, crawl under and enjoy the cozy feeling. The dimmed light is very soothing, but it is not exactly the place to be on a hot summers day (maybe my blanket just had too dark a color) Anyway it's great to get some calm, if not quiet, in a shared or disorganized space.

Thanks for reading

Philipp