Room Darkening
Need to darken your bedroom to help you sleep more soundly? Reduce glare on your television when watching a movie? While every window covering product allows you some measure of light control, some products offer more room darkening benefits than others. A key consideration is fabric or material type and color. Sheer fabrics and semi-opaque fabrics typically soften and filter sunlight, while opaque versions will almost completely block sunlight. We say “almost” because shades and blinds cannot completely eliminate all incoming light as there are almost always slight light gaps.
Honeycomb Shades
Offering the industries smallest light gap of approximately 1/8” on each side of the shade, and a blackout mylar lining incorporated within the honeycomb cells, the Hunter Douglas Honeycomb collection is one of the most popular choices for room darkening window treatments. For additional light control, consider the Hunter Douglas LiteRise Trimkit, which incorporates two side channels to minimize the light gaps. For maximum light and privacy control, the Hunter Douglas Duolite feature utilizes two separate fabric panels to achieve a “day/night” level of convenience, providing limitless options.
Solera Soft Shades
Solera Soft Shades are a hybrid window treatment that creatively combines a Roman shade with a Honeycomb shade. Because of this unique combination and the availability to choose semi-opaque and room darkening fabrics in stylish colors the Solera Soft Shade is quickly becoming a customer favorite. Similar to the Honeycomb Shade it has a minimal light gap of approximately 3/16” on each side.
Vignette Roman Shade
For a room darkening shade that provides more softness and leans towards a traditional style, we recommend the Vignette Roman Shade. The gentle fabric folds will provide you with a dressier finish to your interior without compromising the room darkening qualities. Featuring a minimal light gap of approximately 3/16” on each side with the Tiered Style Vignette Roman Shade.
Provenance Woven Woods
Provenance Woven Woods add a warm, rich dimension to any room, whether they are hanging flat in the fully lowered position, or raised, creating even overlapping folds. Their appearance is relaxed and inviting, perfectly complemented by total functional reliability. With a 1/8” fabric gap along the edge on inside mounted shades, and the ability to choose an attached room darkening liner or a separate operating liner, these shades will darken any room.
Roller Shades
This style of shade is best as an outside mount (meaning that it is mounted on the wall above the window trim) as it has a light gap on each side of approximately ¾” due to the operating mechanisms, which prevents the fabric from going to the edge of your window trim. However; if you prefer the cleaner look of an inside mount, which most do, Hunter Douglas has recently introduced a Blockout system, cleverly designed with Aluminum side and bottom channels to prevent light leakage around the edges.
Silhouette & Nantucket Privacy Sheers
The Silhouette A-Deux or the Silhouette Duolite is a fairly new room darkening window covering option, combining the beauty of an elegant Silhouette with a room darkening roller shade that can operate separately. This provides greater light control then the Silhouette and Nantucket Room Dimming Fabrics. It is important to note however that there is still a large glow on the edge due to the light gap on the sides. To minimize this the option to mount outside the window trim is available or these versatile shades can pair with room darkening drapery panels.
Pirouette
Pirouette Window Shadings, with their soft horizontal fabric vanes, provide an elegant look for any room in the house including bedrooms. Available with room darkening fabrics in an array of textures and colors. Due to the ability of the fabric vanes to adjust for view through, it is normal for light to seep beneath each vane, and in such won’t provide complete room darkening. Larger light gaps along the fabric edges to accommodate operating mechanisms is present with this style of window covering.
Everwood Faux Wood, Parkland Wood & Shutters
Wood blinds, Faux Wood blinds and Shutters provide fairly good room darkening, that is if you don’t mind a small amount of light seeping underneath the slats and along the edges. With the option to choose the De-light feature or Decorative Cotton Tapes on the Parkland Wood Blinds and the Everwood Faux Wood Blinds we can eliminate the light that shines through the route holes.
