Sleepy Time Tracks- Americans Favorite Light Gap Blocker. Effective at Light Blocking Along The Edges of Your Room Darkening Blinds and Blackout Shades (90" White Removable)

The product definitely cuts down on light coming in the sides of blinds. But, not nearly as effectively as they could, and at far too high a price for what you get. Here are some issues (and how to fix them):1. The magnetic strip that sticks to the wall -- some people say it comes off. I just put mine up, so I haven't experienced that yet, but sounds like a problem.2. In the real world, walls aren't perfectly flat. The product makes no accomodation for this. What happens is that the magnetic strip that sticks to the wall conforms to the wall's surface, you then (also magnetically) attached the L-shaped part to the magnetic strip on the wall. But, the L part isn't nearly as flexible as the magnetic strip on the wall. So, it doesn't conform where the wall isn't perfectly straight -- gaps are left between the two magnetic strips. These gaps let light in, and they reduce the holding strength of the already-weak magnets.3. The black paint/dye that is used to absorb light is glossy. So, when you look at is straight on, it looks black and so looks like it would do a good job of absorbing light. But, when light hits it at an angle, the light glares off the surface -- it's like a black mirror reflecting light into your room.4. On top of all this, what you get for $60-$80 + shipping, is two L channel extrusions, and four magnetic strips (one on the wall, one on the L part, for two L parts). The L channels cost $5 each (e.g., see jifram.com/stock-plastic-extrusions/l-channels/). So that's $10 in materials. The magnetic tape costs less than $15 per set of two L parts if you buy a 100' roll (Amazon sells it -- search for "Self Adhesive Flexible Magnetic Tape"). So, they are selling $20 of materials (and that's a retail -- if you were buying in bulk obviously the cost would be lower) for $60-$80. Which I wouldn't actually have a problem with -- you are paying for the convenience of not figuring it out for yourself -- if the product worked great. It doesn't.So, if you are willing to do a tiny bit of work, here's a cheaper, better way to do this:Buy the plastic L extrusion. Buy enough self-adhesive velcro that you have 2X the total length of the L parts.One length of the self-adhesive velcro gets stuck to the L part, one part gets stuck to the wall. Why? Because the velcro offers a little bit of thickness to help with gaps if your wall isn't perfectly straight -- use the magnetic tape though if you want.The other velcro isn't being used as velcro at all. It's just being used as a bumpy black surface, which is really good at absorbing light. So, rather than paint the insides of the L parts black, stick one side of the velcro to each, and voila! You now have a black surface that doesn't reflect glare. (The velcro tape should be about as wide as the L parts you choose).Now you have a better product at half the cost. And, you don't have to paint anything, drill anything, or anything else messy or difficult. The only thing you have to do that you don't do with the this product is apply self-adhesive velcro to both inside faces of the L parts, to make them have a great light-absorbing surface.

There is nothing else like this. Believe me, I looked. I even checked into making these myself, but suitable materials were not to be found. So even though they seem a little pricey, they are worth every penny. They work beautifully. If your window casings are white, get the white. They will look like part of the window casing.Buy enough to do the bottom edge as well. Install sides first. Then install bottom edge, nesting it behind the side strips. When you cut the strips, make sure they fit right; if they are too tight a fit they will buckle, falling off and/or let light in.Anyway, here is a tip. The bottom edge of my blinds was a little too wide to allow for the sleepy time strips. I had to pry off the end caps with a flat screwdriver. This also allowed me to slide off the clear plastic "handles" that one uses as an aid to pull the shade down. These would get in the way of the bottom-edge sleepy time strip. See photos.If excess light is harming your sleep, and you'd rather not install heavy curtains over your blinds, then here is your solution!Addendem: regarding the very thin strip of light along the top, i.e. between the top edge of the blind and the window casing. You can see this in my photo. I have since fixed this. I put black pipe cleaners in this gap. They are just the right size, barely visible, and better than white since they absorb light.

This product does not deserve even 1 star. I was hoping the sides blackout would blackout the side of my windows but it didn't live up to the claim. I'd tried installing it close to the shades to reduce the gaps but it was futile. The before and after pictures look pretty much the same. The rails came with a slight bent so the magnet strips couldn't adhere properly. They'll loose contact after a few minutes. I had to remove the unsightly thing right away. The adhesive strips damaged my paint when I tried to remove them.

I work night shift. if you do too, you know the frustration of trying to catch a little sleep during the day. I have room-darkening honeycomb curtains, but light sneaks through around the edges. I would often sleep facing away from the window to try to combat this problem, but you can only sleep on one side for so long! I found the Sleepy Time Tracks while desperately searching Amazon after a less-than-perfect daytime nap. I am so impressed with the ease and quality of this product! I would pay TWICE the price for the benefits!! Easy to install, blocks out 98% of the extra light, and sooo worth the price for quality sleep. I wish I had found this years ago!! So grateful for this product!

We got blackout shades for our bedroom, not realizing the sizable deduction in width taken by the shade manufacturer would result in a 1/4 inch gap on both sides. To make matters worse, that side of the house has more light in the morning than expected. It truly made it difficult to sleep past 5am, my husband 'the mole' was miserable. I started researching which blinds used the least deduction and was going to reorder new blinds with tighter tolerances. This would have cost us $475 for 3 windows, but since all inside mount shades need some clearance to work, we weren't sure this would solve the problem. Fortunately, I saw a comment about Side Tracks for the 'gap issue', which led me to the Sleepy Time Side Tracks on Amazon. The cost for our 3 windows was $130 - not cheap - but if they worked it would be worth it. Well they are AWESOME! They work exactly as described and look good too. We no longer dread daylight. : ) Note: the double hung windows went as expected, for the casement window with a crank at the bottom, we had to set the tracks out a bit more to clear the crank. Having the shade down when marking for the tracks should account for this. Bottom line, we like these so much we ordered side tracks for our guest bedroom. This is a great product that really fills a need!

These are way overpriced for what you get: I could make something like these for under $20 with corner stripping and magnets. The magnets it came with were weak, and it seemed one had the wrong polarization since the strips wouldn't overlap and stick completely. Another problem is that these will only work if they are sitting flush with your blinds. If your blinds are even 0.5 cm from the strip, light will leak through. In other words, if you have blinds that are mounted a certain way or your window frame has molding that isn't completely flat from window to outer frame, these are useless. I would say that these are ok strictly for roller blinds that have top mounts (NOT side mounts) and are at least 1.5 inches from your window. Otherwise, don't bother.That said, they do help a bit, but not enough to make the price worth it.