You are looking for a place to sleep. You have no job, no money, and no place to stay. The night is closing in, and the city is changing its face from day to night. What will you do? Where will you go? This is the situation for millions of homeless people ‘sleeping rough’ in cities every night all over the world. This paper explores in more depth how the rejection of homeless people in urban spaces is an interplay between public space design and human bodies. The framework of ‘dark design’ is utilized to illustrate how social exclusion by design (e.g. spikes, leaning benches, inserts of metal frame etc.) is materializing, and how this is felt. The paper explores how the material exclusion of homeless people through dark design is enrolled into an ‘atmosphere of rejection’.