Creating Insulated Blackout Window Covers

We made dual-sided window coverings for our van conversion: Reflectix on one side and black canvas fabric on the reverse. Windows are the climate control “weak point” of the van, plus they need to be covered at night to sleep comfortably. The black canvas faces outwards at night and completely blocks light in and out – no one outside can see lights on in our van.

The coverings can be flipped depending on the circumstances. When it’s hot out, we want to keep the heat out of the van. The window coverings are placed such that the Reflectix side is facing outward, to reflect the sun’s rays. In the cold, with the Reflectix facing inward, it helps to keep heat trapped inside the van where we want it. Overall we are really happy with how these work – they’re easy to put in place, and provide great privacy and full light blockage from both the inside and the outside.

Related: Choosing the Best Solar Panels for a Camper Van Conversion

Note: if you cover Reflectix it essentially negates its insulating value as its mechanism of action is reflecting heat off its aluminum face (hence the name). Sandwiching Reflectix between two pieces of fabric means it is doing very little insulating. If you take nothing else away from this article – please, for the love of God, leave the Reflectix exposed on one side!

The first step was to template the size of the window with butcher paper (or in our case, plotter paper from the waste bin at work). This involved tracing in place, cutting the template out, test fitting, and making adjustments as needed to ensure proper coverage. Nadia was aiming for the template to cover the black weather stripping, since the magnets would need to reach the metal beyond. Once the template was acceptable, we traced the shape onto Reflectix with a Sharpie, putting thought into the orientation of the “bubbles” for foldability. Just play around with folding the Reflectix and you’ll see what we mean.

Next, we traced the cut out Reflectix onto the black fabric using a white prismacolor colored pencil. We eyeballed an additional inch allowance beyond this line and cut out. Now with all our pieces cut out, it’s time to put them together! For this, we used spray adhesive, which we sprayed onto the reflectix and adhered the fabric, smoothing down the fabric upon contact to ensure a smooth finish

Note: It may seem like common sense, but the side windows are mirror images, which can get confusing. We made sure to put the black fabric on the opposite side for each piece, so that a covering will function as the black out shade on one side of the van, and flip to serve as the reflectix shade on the other side.

Finally it’s time for magnets! We used small and mighty Rare Earth Magnets along the perimeter, we spaced them as shown in the photo below and it works really well. We used tape to keep them in place temporarily.

• Fold the fabric over the magnets and hand sew them into place, stitching around the entire perimeter of the magnet.
• There is no metal for the magnets to attach to on the bottom edge of the window, so I left this as a flap of fabric to ensure full light blockage.
• Once all magnets were sewed into place, we took to the sewing machine to finish the job, sewing along the full perimeter of the flap, stopping short of the magnets.

The window coverings are super easy, and thanks to the click of the magnets, very satisfying to put in place.

The front windshield cover was fabricated in the same way, with one notable difference: no magnets! The windshield has no accessible metal. As of now, the cover is held in place by folding down the sun visors.  However, this is not very tight and the cover sags, leaving a gap around the rear view mirror. We are exploring options including suction cups!