Condo Shades & Blinds

Shading a condo is a different job from shading a rental. You own the windows, you plan to live with what you choose, and the building usually sets part of the brief: a long run of glass with the same outlook as every other unit, a balcony slider, a bedroom on the bright side, and often association rules on how the windows look from outside. Every shade and blind here is made to your measurements and shipped direct, so one look can run across the whole unit.

Shades and blinds that suit condo windows

Solar shades suit a condo with a view worth keeping. They are chosen by openness, and our sunscreen fabrics come in 1%, 3%, 5% and 10%, blocking roughly 80%, 70%, 60% and 50% of light. A tighter screen tames afternoon glare on west-facing glass; a more open one keeps more of the skyline.

Light filtering roller shades give a softer, even glow in a living room, and blackout roller shades handle a bedroom that faces street lights or a neighboring building. Cellular shades in light filtering or blackout fabric hold a layer of air at the glass that a flat fabric cannot. Zebra shades pair sheer and solid bands that slide past each other, a good fit for a studio where one window does everything.

Wood blinds and faux wood blinds bring a warmer, furnished look to a den or home office, and vertical blinds are worth a look on a wide balcony slider. For a bedroom where you want full blackout without drilling into the frame, ZeroGlow is a cordless blackout cellular shade held inside an edge-to-edge frame that presses into the window opening.

Widths, tall glass and the view from the street

Condo glass tends to run wide, so check width first. On our squared cassette, a light filtering roller shade reaches 98 3/8 inches wide, while blackout and sunscreen fabrics stop at 94 1/2 inches, because the heavier goods are milled on narrower rolls. Anything over 100 inches high moves to the larger cassette and a thicker tube, which reaches 118 inches wide and 120 inches high, subject to the roll width of the fabric you pick. Cordless roller needs at least 23 5/8 inches of width on the squared cassette, so a slim side pane is better served by a chain-operated shade, which builds from 11 3/4 inches.

Cordless cellular shades build from 12 inches up to 94 inches wide and 94 inches high. A motorized cellular shade needs at least 23 inches of width and stops at 79 inches high, so keep motors to the standard-height windows rather than a floor-to-ceiling pane.

Many associations ask for a uniform look from outside. One white or light neutral fabric on every street-facing window keeps the building's face consistent, leaving color and texture for rooms at the back. Check your association's rules before you order.

Measuring and installing them yourself

Measure every opening separately even when a row of windows looks identical. For an inside mount, give us the exact width and allow for a 1/4 inch reduction to clear the frame. For an outside mount, add about 3 7/8 inches to the width and height so the shade overlaps the opening and closes the light gap at the edges.

Roller shades hang from cassette brackets. You need a 6 mm drill bit, the brackets mark at 1.1 inch screw spacing, and two types of expansion anchor come in the box, one for drywall and one for masonry, so match the anchor to the wall you have. Each bracket has four pre-drilled holes: two screws on opposite sides hold a normal shade, and the other two are there for a wide or heavy one. Hook the valance onto the bracket latch, press back until it clicks, and check that both the top and rear have locked. ZeroGlow needs no drilling at all: join the frame corners, run the rubber weather strip around the outside edges, and press the frame into the opening.

A condo is a long-term home, so order samples and hold them against your own glass at the time of day you use each room most.