The Personal Blackout layer for daytime sleep.

Keep them — they're doing real work. But curtains have a much harder job than a mask: they have to control the whole window, every edge, every gap, every place daylight can creep in. A mask only has to control the light immediately around your eyes.

They're two different layers, not two versions of the same thing. Most people who buy this already had blackout curtains first.

Fair question. A cheap mask usually proves the idea works — that's how most people end up looking for a better one. Where they fall down is execution: thin fabric that lets daylight through, a flat front that presses on your eyelids, a strap that shifts the moment you roll over.

Worth knowing too: most "silk" masks at that price are satin, which is a weave, not a fibre — and it's usually polyester. Notturno™ is Grade 6A mulberry silk at 23 momme, with contoured cups and a fully adjustable strap.

Neither can most people who've given up on sleep masks. Flat masks lie directly on your eyelids and lashes, and after a couple of hours that's all you can think about.

The Cupola 3D™ cups hold their shape above your eyes instead of resting on them, so there's real space in front of the eye area — nothing pressing, nothing catching your lashes.

That's a fit problem, and fit is what most masks get wrong. Fixed elastic makes you take whatever tension it came with. The Notturno™ strap is fully adjustable up to 70cm, so you set it once to your own head.

It's built to hold through side sleeping and rolling over — that's the roll-over test further up this page.

It's the most common complaint about sleep masks, and it usually comes down to thick synthetic padding sitting flat against the skin. Notturno™ uses natural, breathable mulberry silk and the whole mask weighs 45g.

Honest answer though: if your bedroom is genuinely too warm, that's a temperature problem and no mask will fix it. Deal with the room. Let the mask deal with the light.

Then sort the noise first. Earplugs or white noise will do more for you than any sleep mask, and we'd rather tell you that than sell you the wrong thing.

Darkness is one layer of daytime sleep, not all of it. Plenty of night workers end up using both — but if noise is genuinely your main issue, start there.

No. This isn't about resetting your body clock or holding a perfect schedule — that isn't realistic on a rotating rota, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.

It protects whatever sleep window you've got today. Three nights in a row, a one-off, a short turnaround — the job is the same.

The strap adjusts up to 70cm, so it covers everything from a small to a large head. You set it once to your ideal fit and it stays there, wash after wash.

It's a flat adjustable strap rather than velcro — so it won't catch in your hair when you take it off.

Simple, and it lasts for years.

• By hand (recommended): cold water, a gentle detergent, dry flat in the air.
• In the machine: delicate cycle at 30°C in a laundry bag, air dry.

One golden rule: never tumble dry, never use bleach.

You've got 90 nights to find out — on your own rota, through day sleeps, warm afternoons and short turnarounds. Long enough to know whether it's actually earning its place in your setup, rather than judging it on one morning.

If it isn't, send it back.