I covered the glass in my windows with inch-thick blue-foam boards from the hardware store ( the kind made to insulate walls). The problem is, those big "DOW" words on the side of the boards didn't wash off, so I covered the interior-facing side of each foam board with white shelving paper. That didn't work either because light still shined through, and you could still read the "DOW" statements even in the dark. So then I painted the inner side of each board black to make the black words disappear, and then covered each foam board again with white over the black. That worked great; no more light shining through, and no more printed words visible either.
But the foam boards started to expand, shrink, and warp according to changes in the weather, causing them to fall out of the windows. I've seen how people solve that problem with magnets around the edge of the window covers, so I bought twenty magnets. But that didn't work either because all metal around the windows in my 1998 Chevy Express 3500 high-top van is non-magnetic!
So I got velcro patches with sticky on the back and stuck it to glass and foam board; which worked great at first, until the heat from the sun on a hot summer day heated the velcro sticky on the dark-tinted glass so hot the sticky turned into crust and powder! (Down to the floor my window covers went sailing again.)
Finally, I drilled a sheet-meta screw into the metal above and below each window glass, then stretched a bungee cord from the top screw to the bottom screw on each window to hold my covers in place. But the bungee chords were not tight against the foam boars, letting them fall back a little from the glass, allowing inside air to flow over the glass, defeating the effect of the insulation. So then I cut one-inch-square blocks of wood, putting one block behind the center of each bungee chord, which presses the foam-board covers firmly against the glass. THIS WORKS! No more problem. Very secure with no chance of them falling off again.
But I felt a little sad, thinking the red bungee chords over wood blocks on each window would look messy, cheezy, and unfinished, but they don't! They look great and so unique! The fact that each window, left/right/rear, has the same chord/block style on it makes them look like a consistent and really cool design. I like it.
This may be a weird suggestion but I thought I'd check with the experts here.
