Polaris, have you considered changing your bedroom to one without an eastern exposure? Maybe on the northwest side of your house. And at 4:30 in the morning, is it LIGHT which brings you awake? or perhaps the sound of birds beginning to stir, or a train whistle or a dude coming from/going to work? Everyone has a different sensitivity to light, and different preferences as to HOW we like to be awakened as well. My DH wakes up very early too, and cannot go back to sleep. He lies there and watches me sleep w/o a problem. I've seen these old movies where people use eye masks to black out the light. That is a lot cheaper than shades. But of course, no good for reducing the heat gain in your home. I am presently making some roman shades out of 90% shade cloth and Thermalsuede lining. They will go on the north wall of our bedroom, behind floor to ceiling drapes. On the west wall, with intense latitude 30 North sun beating on the glass much of the year, I am not making roman shades of the material, but I am mounting the same fabric in flat panels floor to ceiling behind floor to ceiling drapes. This exposure faces the street, so I probably won't be opening them often. The shade cloth is normally used outdoors. You could order it from Home Depot in various lengths, but I opted for the 100' roll which is quite wide. If you have a way to make a seasonal shade mounted to your roof eave outside, this would be the material to use. Either weight it at the bottom or better yet, skewer the bottom corners to tiedowns to keep it from flapping and waking you up too. But it would cut down the solar gain a LOT.

We have made to order Levelor cellular shades from Home Depot in our bedrooms and bathroom. They're the blackout kind and cordless. After about 18 months, one of the shades broke. It's being repaired/replaced by Levelor now. They seem to be decent quality for the most part and go up/down okay. Initially, they ordered the non blackout kind and sent them for installation. They did replace them with the correct kind but we got to live with the standard one for a few weeks. There was a significant difference in the amount of light between the two. You can still see light around the edges so are more like room darkening than blackout, in my opinion.

I have the plain old blackout cellular shades but I would have chosen the blackout/light-filtering type if (a) I wanted daytime privacy or (b) I wanted to prevent the sun from shining in without darkening the room.

Blackout curtains are great, but you need to look at all the edges, as that is where light will leak out. In my experience that means: A pelmet on the top. Either one curtain or make sure they overlap where they meet in the middle. The curtains need to extend well beyond he window at each side. The rail that Sharon has posted looks a good idea too. Floor length sounds like a good idea, as long as you are not covering a radiator. Most radiators are situated directly below the window, so you end up blocking the heat. We have curtains that fall just below the window and tuck them between the radiator and wall. Aesthetically not ideal, but if you're asleep, who cares? Better than waking up to a cold room. A more expensive option is metal roller blinds fitted into the window frame.