Could blackout blinds keep a vampire alive during the day?

Could blackout blinds keep a vampire alive in a pinch if their coffin was unavailable? Could you consider using a room with blackout blinds in place of a coffin for say, travel purposes, or even as a permanent alternative to an underground repose?

Well. We’re so confident that our blackout blinds (when hung correctly) could keep a vampire alive that we’re prepared to offer a complete set of blackout blinds totally free to any vampire that’s willing to give them a whirl. Please see the final section for details on how to claim.

Sadly, we’ve fallen short thus far in terms of finding an actual vampire who is willing to take one for the team in this respect, and believe me it’s not for want of trying.

In order to try to rectify this, this blog post will provide some insights on blackout blinds and their applications for vampires, and offer some important information and advice on the potential limitations of blackout blinds as well as how to hang them for optimum vampire safety.

Blackout blinds and vampire safety: potential limitations

For mortals, blackout blinds are supposed to keep the sun out of your room so that you can sleep; or perversely, so that you can kill imaginary vampires in gaming marathons without screen glare getting you bitten. Although frankly, we think that this latter application for blackout blinds is somewhat offensive to real vampires TBH.

This means that a little chink of light that your blind seems to have befriended is likely to be hella annoying to real live people who picked blackout blinds; but what if your use of blackout blinds was a bit more highly loaded?

Could, say, a room with blackout blinds keep a vampire alive by protecting them effectively against all harmful external UV light?

Maybe.

Now I get that “OMG YES” was probably more the response you were expecting, given that I’m claiming that blackout blinds COULD keep a vampire alive as the whole point of this post. But the “maybe” comes from the fact that how your blackout blinds are hung is absolutely integral to their ability to block light.

How come? Ok, so light cannot get through the actual fabric of a blackout blind itself. If you wrapped yourself/a vampire in the fabric and sealed it with more of the same, you/the theoretical vampire would fully be protected from the sun. Actually, we should maybe think of branching out into making travel sacks for vampires out of blackout blind material, now that I come to think of it.

So, why the “maybe?” Because depending on how you hang it, light may get in around the sides of the blind, which is somewhat annoying for mortal daysleepers, but rather more terminal for our undead clients.

Blackout blinds hung inside of the window recess are more likely to get a level of light leakage than those hung outside of it, while those hung outside of/over the recess will block very very nearly all external light if they cover a large enough margin of the wall.

How to hang blackout blinds to provide total darkness and optimum vampire safety.

There are really only two ways to be 100% sure that you keep all external light short of nuclear explosion from getting in through a window. Other than bricking up the window, so actually that’s three options but let’s just stick with those that apply to blackout blinds and vampires for now.

• The hard way would be to fit external light-blocking shutters to the exterior of the window, and to use a blackout blind inside of it.
• The easier way would be to hang one blackout blind inside of the window recess, but then to add a second blackout blind or a pair of blackout curtains to the outside of the window recess too, with a significant buffer zone (Buffy zone, snerk) at the top, bottom, and sides.
• If you’re working with a limited budget and can only spring for one set of blinds and also, either aren’t a vampire or have a coffin in your room too, hanging blackout blinds over the window recess with a margin of at least 10cm or more over the wall on all four sides should be perfectly fine for 99.9% of light-haters.

But what if I really AM a vampire and NEED 100% darkness? Can you guarantee my safety?

Ok, I feel you Nosferatu, and I’m encouraged by your willingness to consider the possibility of trying blackout blinds. Ergo I will finish by offering you the following guarantee on blackout blinds, should you choose us to supply them:

If you follow my advice above and hang your blackout blinds accordingly, I fully guarantee that you will not expire due to the sun.*

*Disclaimer:

We accept no liability for expiration or injury caused by sunlight entering the room by means other than via a failing with the blind itself; including but not limited to:

• Light leakage under the room’s doors.
• Filtering through air bricks/vents.
• As a result of accidental opening of the blinds because you thought you heard the ice cream van coming.
• Because you decided to do your nails and overlooked the issue of using a UV nail light in your excitement.

How to claim your free blackout blinds (vampires only)

If you are a vampire, we are more than happy to offer you a complete set of made-to-measure blackout blinds for any room of your home, totally free (we’ll even cover the shipping).

To claim this offer:

• Please email a copy of both sides of your government-issued ID (ensuring that the “mortality status” designation marked in section 8 is clearly legible, along with the document’s watermark) to vampires@englishblinds.co.uk
• Please also leave a note detailing the measurements of each of your windows, and a link to your chosen blackout blind styles and colours.

Please note, our “free blackout blinds for vampires” offer extends to window coverings for one room only. If you appear to be requesting an inordinately large number of blinds and your shipping address indicates that your abode is a terraced house rather than an actual castle, we reserve the right to request photographic evidence of the number of windows within the room in question.

If you have any questions about how to measure up for blackout blinds, which blackout blinds are best for vampires, or require further information on blackout blinds and vampire child safety, please drop me an email or leave me a comment.