Breakfast Nook Shades & Blinds

A breakfast nook is usually the brightest seat in the house. It is tucked into a bay, a corner or a run of windows, with a table or built-in banquette pushed right up to the glass, and the morning sun lands straight on the table at the exact hour you sit down to eat. The shade has to cut that glare without making the corner feel closed in, clear a deep sill and the backs of the seats, and sit neatly where two or three windows meet. Breakfast nook shades and blinds are made to the sizes you measure and shipped direct to you.

Which shades and blinds suit a breakfast nook

Light filtering roman shades are the classic choice. They hang as a smooth fabric panel when lowered and gather into soft folds when raised, which gives a small eating corner a tailored, furnished look. A matching valance covers the hardware.

Light filtering roller shades give a flatter, simpler look in 100 percent polyester fabric that rolls away into a compact cassette, a good match for a modern kitchen. Solar shades use the same roller hardware with a screen fabric sold by openness at 1, 3, 5 and 10 percent, blocking roughly 80, 70, 60 and 50 percent of light, so you can keep the garden view while taking the glare off the table. Zebra shades alternate sheer and solid bands that slide past each other, letting you shift between filtered light and privacy without raising the shade at all.

Woven wood shades bring natural texture in bamboo, jute and reed, and suit a farmhouse or coastal nook. On its own a woven shade is about 50 percent see-through, and a light filtering liner takes it to roughly 70 percent. Natural fibers are not suited to high-humidity rooms, so keep woven wood for a nook that sits away from the range and the sink.

Use the same fabric on every window and stop every shade at the same height so the nook reads as one piece.

Sills, seats and where windows meet

A nook window often has a deep sill or a banquette back pressed against it. On a roller shade we can reverse the roll, so the fabric hangs off the front of the tube instead of the back, which moves it forward to clear a deep sill, a handle or a crank.

Where windows meet at a corner or in a bay, the cassette depth matters, because one shade has to stop against the next. Our smaller squared and round cassettes are 2 15/16 inches deep, the standard squared cassette 3 1/2 inches and the large squared cassette 4 3/16 inches. On a wide run of glass, the 2 15/16 inch cassettes can also carry two roller shades on one headrail.

Check minimum widths against the lift. A manual clutch loop roller starts at 11 3/4 inches. A cordless roller needs 19 3/4 inches on the 2 15/16 inch cassettes and 23 5/8 inches on the 3 1/2 inch cassette, because the spring sits inside the tube, and a motorized roller needs 20 1/8 to 20 1/2 inches. Zebra starts at 18.8 inches. Cordless leaves no loose cords near the table.

Measuring and installing them yourself

Measure each window separately. Take the width at the top, middle and bottom and use the smallest, rounded down to the nearest 1/8 inch, then measure the height on both sides. Woven wood needs at least 1 5/8 inches of frame depth to mount inside and 2 5/8 inches to sit flush, and the factory applies its own 1/4 inch width deduction, so send exact figures.

Roman, roller, solar and zebra shades hang from a cassette bracket fixed with a 6 mm drill bit, with screw holes marked at 1.1 inch spacing and anchors for drywall or masonry in the box. Two screws on opposite sides hold each bracket on a sound wall. Hook the valance groove onto the bracket latch, press back until it clicks, and confirm the top and rear have both locked before you let go.

Order samples and look at them at breakfast time, in the light you are trying to tame.