Dustin bought a set of Eclipse light blocking curtains at Kmart, but woke up the next day to a well-lit room and some gently glowing windows. The picture Dustin took of the curtains looks an awful lot like the “normal” ones in the official product shot.

I recently needed to buy some new curtains for my bedroom. My old “curtains” were some pieces of thick black cloth that I had sewn a pocket on one side to go on a curtain rod. They were great at blocking out the light during the day if I wanted to sleep, but the thing is that they were black, and I wanted something a little nicer looking.

I had seen these blackout curtains in Walmart and Kmart a few times, and decided to check them out. The Kmart in our area usually has some good sales, so I headed there to see what they had. I ended up buying some Eclipse “Kent” curtains there for I think $12 per panel.

These things claim to block out over 99% of light, and somehow reduce noise by up to 40%. They also have some other unrealistic claims about saving on energy and heating and such, but that wasn’t really my concern. Now I knew that the 99% light blockage sounded a little optimistic, but I would have been satisfied if it would just cut out most of the light.

So I put them up that evening and went to bed thinking I would wake up to a nice dark room.

Didn’t happen. The attached photo shows how much light these things really “block.” Remember too, that photo is exposed for the window, so the room kinda goes dark, which makes it look a little bit darker than it actually is in the room.

The thing that really bugs me about this is the fact that they look like a decent product at first, have pretty big displays in the stores, and make some pretty bold claims that are complete B.S. Here’s a link to their website so you can see what they claim.

What do you think? These things block out more like 2% of the light. Some of the curtains go for as much as $30+ per panel, so I thought I’d let others know that these things are a complete waste of money. I’m going back to my homemade crappy black curtains.

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