Roller Shades Serve Many Needs
Among the most popular window treatments these days, roller shades are growing the fastest. This great popularity is driven by a new assortment of fabrics that can allow roller shades to achieve new results, easily. As a window treatment, roller shades once held the position of most basic choice. Only available in a handful of colors, roller shades could be decorated with a small assortment of decorative trims or tassels. However, recent innovations in decorative roller shade fabrics as well as light filtering shade fabrics, have led to significant advances and increasingly more situations where roller shades can be used.
Room darkening blackout roller shades work simply by covering the opening with a vinyl coated fiberglass roller shade fabric which blocks nearly all the light that attacks a window. The light which does enter is the exception of any light that passes around the shade on the sides, top or bottom. Among the most difficult, but not impossible problems to eliminate is the problem where sunlight circumvents roller shades, even when the shade is installed outside the window frame. Nevertheless, blocking the main light from the bulk of the window is usually a sufficient result with roller shades. Innovative manufacturers of roller shade control systems can now make guiding channels for the roller shades, forcing them to fully repel light so it cannot pass by the sides of the shades. These side channel roller shades are extremely expensive, but if they solve the sleep or entertainment needs of clients, and make a roller shade truly blackout, then price is not an issue.
High end decorative roller shade fabric will increase in the market, as it has in the past. These lovely materials can create attractive and translucent shades, which, when properly sewn and manufactured, will stay even, flat and strait, showing the beauty of great materials in a pseudo-traditional roller shade. Using these fancy fabrics, roller shades breathe life into a window and the decorations in a room. Remember that the materials, however, must be designed for roller shades, and not merely used for them. Look for certifications, like ISO-9001 which are marks of quality, there for you. Only true roller shade fabric can control to be straight and flat, so it can roll up onto the tubes evenly.
One can easily decorate with roller shades, which are finally available as a decorative item. When selecting materials, choose those which will make for a flat and smooth appearance of the roller fabric-which will lead to smooth roller shades, if a great design and appearance is what one wants. The quality fabrics for roller shades are made well and will certainly perform nicely. Lesser quality materials will not only make for unattractive roller shades, they can also lead to malfunctions. Select quality roller shade fabrics, choose your styles and then continue to choose from the range of colors. There are so many choices.
Roller shades are increasingly being used for solar shading using a solar screen material. These materials, often called roller screens, are a bit more decorative than plain bug screens, and usually a bit more colorful than blackout roller shades. Roller shades made from solar screen fabric can be useful in lowering the amount of UV light that enters a room, and can thus lower the heat and energy bills. These roller shades can also protect your furnishings from the damaging rays of the sun, and can help decorate your rooms. There are several options in what is called openness for these roller fabrics. Roller shades that face to the north usually do not need a very tightly woven screen, and by using a more open weave (a higher openness number) designers can keep more of the view available. However, if you live in a high rise facing the east or the south, the intensity of the sun can be limited tremendously by using a tighter woven shade fabric.
With solar shade materials as roller shades, they can become energy management equipment. Consider that if a person needs to get dressed and want privacy, lowering a roller shade which still allows some light to enter the room will let an occupant leave the lights off, thus saving electricity with roller shades. One can have privacy and still permit some light to enter the spaces. Do that with old roller shades!
Roller shades no longer need to be a basic shade from the hardware store. Designers have found the many choices of decorative, blackout and solar shading roller shade materials available and have begun to use them, increasingly. It is this increasing demand from designers for more choices in roller shades that has benefited customers across the country, and will stimulate the decorative imagination to choose the best roller shades, and not just what is available.
Judith Persit is an interior designer specializing in window treatments. Judith writes about roller shades. Learn more about shades at her site. .
