Eye blinks strongly attenuate visual input, yet we perceive the world as continuous. How this visual continuity is achieved remains a fundamental and unsolved problem. A decrease in luminance sensitivity has been proposed as a mechanism, but is insufficient to mask the even larger decrease in luminance due to blinks. Here we put forward a different hypothesis: visual continuity can be achieved through shortening of perceived durations of the sensory consequences of blinks. Here we probed the perceived durations of the blackouts caused by blinks, and of visual stimuli interrupted by blinks. We found that the perceived durations of blackouts due to blinks are about half as long as artificial blackouts immediately preceding or following the blink. Stimuli interrupted by blinks were perceived as briefer than uninterrupted stimuli, by about the same duration as the interruption-but so were stimuli interrupted by optically simulated blinks. There was a difference between real and simulated blinks, however: the decrease in perceived duration depended on the duration of the interruption for simulated, but not for real, blinks. These profound modifications in time perception during blinks show a way in which temporal processing contributes to the solution of an essential perceptual problem. Significance statement Although eye blinks effectively shut off the light entering the eyes for brief but significant periods every few seconds, we hardly perceive the blackouts or the visual images seen before and after the blink as interrupted. In this study we showed that the perception of time is altered around blinks: both the period of darkness during the blink, and the duration of brief images straddling the blink, are perceived as significantly briefer than equivalent periods of darkness before or after the blink, or images with the same duration that aren't interrupted by blinks. This alteration in the perception of time may be the reason why we hardly perceive the interruptions in vision due to blinks.