The blinds in our fifth wheel started falling apart somewhere outside Flagstaff. We were parked at a dispersed site with Maggie curled up on the couch, and one of the slats snapped clean through when we tried to close it for the night. Not bent. Not stuck. Snapped. We duct-taped it back together because that is what you do when you are three days into a two-week trip and the nearest RV supply store is forty miles away. That taped slat stayed up for another eight months. We got used to looking at it.
That is the thing about factory RV blinds. They fail slowly enough that you normalize the dysfunction. A slat breaks here. A cord frays there. The mechanism gets sticky and you have to yank it twice to get it to move. Light starts leaking in around the edges at five in the morning, but you tell yourself it is fine because you were going to wake up early anyway. Dust settles into the pleats and you cannot get it out no matter how many times you vacuum, but it is an RV, so everything gets dusty, right?
We tolerated all of it for three years. And then we switched to RV motorhome curtains and realized we had been living with a problem we did not have to live with. The difference in light control, temperature regulation, and overall quality of life inside our rig made us wonder why we had put up with those failing blinds for so long.
What We Actually Hated About Our RV Blinds (And Why We Stuck With Them Too Long)
The light leaks were the worst part, but they crept up on us. When we first bought the rig in 2021, the blinds closed tight. No gaps. No streaks of sunlight at dawn. But RV blinds are made from thin plastic slats held together with even thinner cords, and both of those materials degrade fast when you park in the sun. By our second summer, the slats had warped enough that they no longer sat flush against each other. We would close them at night and wake up to stripes of light cutting across the bed at 5:30 AM.
We tried everything. We adjusted the cords. We realigned the brackets. We even bought those little clips that are supposed to hold the slats together at the bottom. Nothing worked. The blinds were designed to block light in a climate-controlled house, not in a rig that sits in full desert sun at 130 degrees and then drops to fifty overnight. The materials could not handle it.
Then there was the dust. RV blinds have horizontal slats, which means every single one of them is a shelf for dust, pollen, and whatever else blows in when you are parked on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. We have found that you can vacuum them, wipe them down, even take them outside and spray them with a hose, and within a week they look exactly the same. The dust works its way into the pleats and stays there. It made the whole rig feel dirtier than it actually was.
The privacy was never great either. RV blinds are designed to let in light during the day, which means they are semi-transparent. If you are parked in a crowded RV park at night with your interior lights on, anyone walking by can see straight through them. Not details, but shapes. Shadows. Enough to know someone is home and what they are doing. We got into the habit of turning off all the lights before we opened the blinds in the morning, which is a ridiculous way to live.
But we stuck with them because replacing window treatments in an RV sounded like a massive project. We assumed it would involve custom measurements, professional installation, and a bill we did not want to think about. So we duct-taped the broken slat, vacuumed the dust every week, and woke up to sunrise whether we wanted to or not.
The One Thing That Finally Broke Us
We were parked at a Florida state park in July. Full sun. No shade. The air conditioner was running nonstop and we were still cooking. We closed all the blinds to try to block the heat, but the thin plastic slats did absolutely nothing. The sun came straight through them like they were not even there. We could feel the heat radiating off the windows even with the blinds down.
That night, our electric bill for the month came through and it was double what we normally pay. We were burning through power trying to cool a rig that had zero insulation on the windows. That was it. We ordered RV motorhome curtains the next day.
Why We Switched to Curtains (The Real Reasons, Not the Marketing Ones)
The first thing we noticed after we hung the new curtains was the temperature. We installed them on a Saturday morning in August, and by that afternoon the rig was noticeably cooler. Not a little cooler. Noticeably cooler. The fabric blocked the sun completely, which meant the windows were not turning into heat radiators every time we parked in an open lot. The air conditioner cycled off for the first time in weeks.
We did not expect that. We bought the curtains to block light, not to insulate the rig. But the difference was immediate. Blackout fabric is thick and dense, and it turns out that thick, dense fabric also blocks heat. We have found that the temperature inside the rig stays about ten degrees cooler on a sunny day with the curtains closed than it did with the blinds down. That translates directly into less runtime on the air conditioner, which translates directly into lower electric bills and longer battery life when we are boondocking. Window treatments can significantly reduce heat gain and improve energy efficiency in any living space, and we saw that play out firsthand in our rig.
The privacy was the second thing. We parked at a busy RV park outside Asheville a few weeks after the install, and for the first time in three years we did not feel like we were living in a fishbowl. The curtains are completely opaque. No shadows. No shapes. No light leaking out at night to advertise that someone is home. We could leave the interior lights on, walk around, cook dinner, and not worry about who was watching from the road.
That sounds paranoid, but it is not. RVs get broken into. We have talked to enough people who have had their rigs ransacked while they were out hiking to know that privacy is not about comfort. It is about security. Curtains do not stop a determined thief, but they do stop someone from casually scoping out your rig to see if you have anything worth stealing.
The light blocking was the reason we bought them, and it delivered exactly what we needed. We can close the curtains at night and sleep until we actually want to wake up, not until the sun decides to wake us up. We have parked under streetlights, next to RV park floodlights, and in sites where our neighbor left their porch light on all night, and none of it mattered. The curtains blocked everything.
But the durability is what made us wish we had done this years ago. Curtains do not have moving parts. There are no cords to fray, no slats to snap, no mechanisms to jam. You hang them on a rod and you pull them open or closed. That is it. We have been using the same set for over a year now, and they look exactly the same as the day we installed them. No warping. No fading. No duct tape.
The maintenance is also nonexistent. Dust does not settle into curtains the way it does into blinds because there are no horizontal surfaces for it to land on. When the fabric does get dirty, we pull the panels down, throw them in the washing machine, and hang them back up. We have done that twice in the last year. It takes ten minutes.
The Curtains We Actually Bought and How We Hung Them Without Calling Anyone
We went with custom blackout panels from a company that specializes in RV window treatments. The fabric is heavy enough to block light and heat but not so heavy that it sags or pulls the rod down. We measured the windows ourselves using the track widths, not the finished widths, because the manufacturer told us they would add the right amount of fullness. That was the first thing we learned: RV windows are not standard sizes, so big-box store curtains do not fit. You need something cut to your actual measurements.
We hung them using tension rods wedged between the window frames. No drilling. No screws. No permanent modifications to the rig. The rods stay in place because of friction, and they have held up fine even on rough roads. We tried command hooks first, but they did not hold the weight of the fabric. Tension rods were easier and more reliable.
The one thing that surprised us during installation was how much the fullness factor mattered. We ordered curtains at 1.5 times the width of the window, which gave us enough fabric to create soft pleats without overwhelming the small space. Any more than that and the curtains would have looked bulky and taken up too much wall space when they were open. Any less and they would have hung flat and looked cheap. We also considered cheap polyester blackout panels, but every review we read mentioned fading after a single summer in the sun. We have seen enough RV gear fall apart from UV exposure to know that paying a little more upfront for quality RV motorhome curtains is worth it.
What We Wish We’d Known Before Our First Set (And What We Know Now)
The first mistake we made was not leaving enough clearance at the bottom. We measured the curtains to reach the floor because that is what you do in a house, but in an RV everything shifts and flexes when you drive. The curtains dragged on the floor, picked up dirt, and started fraying at the hem within a month. We had to rehang them with an inch of clearance, which solved the problem immediately.
The second thing we learned was that fabric weight matters more than we thought. We almost bought lighter curtains because they were cheaper, but lighter fabric does not block heat as well and it shows every wrinkle. The heavier blackout fabric we ended up with hangs straight, looks cleaner, and actually insulates the windows. It cost more, but it performs better in every way that matters.
We also did not realize how much easier curtains would be to adjust compared to blinds. With blinds, you either have them open or closed. There is no middle ground. With curtains, we can pull them halfway to let in light but still block the view from outside, or we can tie them back completely when we want full sun. That flexibility turned out to be more useful than we expected, especially when we are parked somewhere with a great view but also a lot of foot traffic.
The biggest lesson, though, was that we should have done this two years earlier. We spent so much time and energy trying to make the factory blinds work when the solution was sitting right in front of us the whole time. Curtains are not complicated. They are not expensive. They are better. We have talked to other full-time RVers who made similar upgrades to their rigs, and you can find more tips about improving your RV living experience through simple modifications like this.
Before You Buy Your First Set of RV Motorhome Curtains, Do This One Thing
Measure your windows three different times before you order anything. RV windows are not square. They are not level. They are not consistent from one side of the rig to the other. We measured ours once, ordered curtains, and then realized we had measured the visible glass instead of the track width. The curtains did not fit. We had to send them back and start over.
The second time, we measured the track width on both sides of every window and wrote down each measurement separately. We did not assume the driver’s side window was the same size as the passenger side window, because it was not. We did not round up or estimate. We measured to the quarter inch and double-checked everything before we placed the order.
If your rig does not have tracks, measure the full width of the window frame where you plan to mount the rod, then add a few inches on each side so the curtains overlap the frame when they are closed. That overlap is what blocks light leaks. Without it, you will end up with gaps around the edges that let in sun and heat, and you will have wasted your money on curtains that do not actually solve the problem.
We have been using our RV motorhome curtains for over a year now, and we still cannot believe we waited as long as we did. That taped-up blind is gone. The dust is gone. The 5 AM wake-up calls are gone. The rig stays cooler, the electric bill is lower, and we actually sleep through the night. If you are still tolerating broken blinds because replacing them sounds like too much work, measure your windows this weekend and order a set of RV motorhome curtains. You will wish you had done it sooner.
