Total darkness, wherever you sleep
A shaped mask that keeps the light off your eyes and the pressure off your eyelids, light enough to forget you have it on.
- Shuts out the light in rooms you cannot darken
- Soft cotton blend, breathable enough for a full night
- Soft band all the way round, tightened however you like
Choose how you want to sleep
Sold out
30 nights to try it, with a full refund if it is not for you
One sleep mask with an adjustable velcro strap. 85% cotton and 15% polyester, 2.5 oz in total.
Sit the mask over your eyes and pull the velcro strap until it is snug without pressing. It is shaped so the fabric rests on your face rather than on your eyelids, which is what makes it wearable all night.
Hand wash in cold water with a mild detergent and let it air dry. A gentle machine cycle is fine now and then. Skip the tumble dryer so the shape and the softness last.
Free return and full refund within 30 days, on purchases made on moonbird.life or shop.moonbird.life. The sleep mask carries a two-year warranty against defects in materials or artisanship from the purchase date.
Why dark enough is darker than you think
The amount of evening light it takes to start shifting your body clock is lower than most people would guess, and it lands differently on every person who walks into the same room.
A mask takes the judgement out of it. Rather than working out whether the room is dark enough, you make it dark.
Night 1
Darkness on demand
The mask goes on and the room goes away, whether that is a streetlight through thin curtains or a sun that came up too early.
Week 1
A cue your body learns
Putting the mask on becomes the signal that the day is finished. A repeated cue like that does a lot of the work of winding down.
Every night away
Your bedroom, packed
Hotel curtains that never quite meet, a plane at the wrong hour, a spare room with the wrong blind. It weighs 2.5 oz and packs flat.
Complete the ritual
The mask handles the light. Nasal strips open the airway and mouth strips keep your nose doing the work, so the three of them cover the night together.
On in five seconds
1
Wrap it around
The band goes the whole way around your head. Wrap it and close the velcro wherever it feels right that night.
2
Sit it over your eyes
The shaped side faces in, so the fabric rests on your face and leaves your eyelids free.
3
Sleep
Take it off in the morning and hang it up to air.
Three nights it changes
Summer mornings
A sunrise at half past five stops deciding when your night ends.
Shift work and jet lag
Sleeping while the world outside is awake, without rebuilding the room around it.
Hotels and spare rooms
Curtains that do not close properly, standby lights, a corridor glowing under the door.
Why this mask
| moonbird sleep mask | Flat fabric masks | |
|---|---|---|
| Tall and wide enough to cover well past the eye socket | Narrow panel over the eyes | |
| Soft band wraps the whole head, no elastic digging in | Tight elastic strap | |
| Shaped to keep pressure off your eyelids | Often flat to the eye | |
| Cotton blend, breathable all night | Varies per brand | |
| Weight | 2.5 oz | Varies per brand |
| 30-day money-back guarantee | Rarely |
What the research says about darkness
Darkness is one of the better studied parts of a night's sleep. Here is what researchers found when they measured it.
Together these studies explain why a room that feels dark often is not, and why the fix is easier than rebuilding your bedroom.
22 minutes
Dim light still counts
In 55 adults, five hours of evening light at 10 lux, roughly a dimmed lamp, pushed the body's night signal 22 minutes later than near darkness. At 30 lux it was 77 minutes.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019. Read the study
6 to 350
Dark enough is personal
In the same study, the light level needed to halve melatonin ran from 6 lux in the most sensitive person to 350 lux in the least. How a room feels tells you nothing about where you sit in that range, which is the argument for blocking the light rather than judging it.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019. Read the study
13 trials
Blocking the light improved how people rated their sleep
Pooling 13 randomised trials across 797 patients, wearing an eye mask improved how well people rated their sleep. These were brightly lit wards rather than bedrooms, which is exactly where light is hardest to control.
Journal of Advanced Nursing, 2021. Read the study
Next day
Sharper the morning after
Healthy adults who wore an eye mask overnight for a week did better on a word-learning task and reacted faster on an attention test the following day. The researchers tied the learning effect to time spent in deep sleep.
SLEEP, 2023. Read the study
Where darkness ends, moonbird begins
The mask settles the room. Moonbird settles you, guiding your breath to a slower rhythm in your hand and showing your heart rate variability rise as you let the day go.
Meet moonbird