Door Window Shades & Blinds

A window in a door is a small pane with a big job. It lets daylight into a hallway, mudroom or kitchen, and it also puts the inside of your house on show to anyone standing on the step. A shade on that glass has to give privacy when you want it, get out of the way when you don't, and live with a surface that swings open dozens of times a day. That is a different brief from any window.

Which shades and blinds work on a door window

Cellular shades are the first choice for most entry and back doors. Ordered cordless, they build from 12 inches wide and 12 inches high, so they fit a small half-lite as easily as a full-length glass panel, and there is no chain to swing or catch when the door moves. Light filtering cellular keeps a hallway bright while blurring the view in. Blackout cellular suits a door that opens straight into a bedroom. Our cellular line also has a no-drill mounting option, useful when you would rather not put screws into the door.

Light filtering and blackout roller shades give the slimmest look, a flat panel of fabric that rolls up into a small cassette. Solar shades are rollers in a screen fabric, sold by openness from 1 to 10 percent; the lower the openness, the more light the screen blocks. Zebra shades alternate sheer and solid bands, so you can shift between filtered light and privacy without raising the shade at all.

Sizes, lifts and handle clearance

The door handle is the detail that trips up most orders. On a roller shade we can reverse the roll, so the fabric hangs off the front of the tube instead of the back. That moves it forward, clear of a lever, a deadbolt thumb turn or a deep sill at the bottom of the glass.

Minimum widths depend on the lift. A manual clutch loop roller starts at 11 3/4 inches. A cordless roller needs 19 3/4 inches on our 2 15/16 inch cassettes and 23 5/8 inches on the 3 1/2 inch cassette, because the spring has to sit inside the tube. A motorized roller needs between 20 1/8 and 21 1/4 inches. Zebra starts at 18.8 inches. On a narrow half-lite, cordless cellular at 12 inches is usually the simplest way to avoid a cord.

Cordless cellular reaches 94 inches wide and 94 inches high, more than enough for a full-view door. A cordless lift on any system has no loose cords, which makes it the child and pet safe option on a door the whole household uses.

Measuring and installing it yourself

Decide first whether the shade sits inside the recess around the glass or on the flat face of the door. Door glass often sits in a shallow frame, so check the depth before you commit to an inside mount. If it is tight, an outside mount on the door face is the tidy answer. For an inside mount on cellular, the shade is built about 1/4 inch narrower than the opening to clear the frame. For an outside mount, add about 3 7/8 inches to both width and height so the shade overlaps the glass and closes the light gap at the edges.

Roller, zebra and solar shades hang from a cassette bracket. You need a 6 mm drill bit, screw holes are marked at 1.1 inch spacing, and two anchor types come in the box. Each bracket has four pre-drilled holes; two screws on opposite sides hold it on a sound surface, and the extra two are there when the surface is weak or the shade is wide. Hook the valance groove onto the bracket latch, press back until it clicks, and confirm both the top and rear have locked before you let go.

If the door also has glass to either side, order those shades at the same time and in the same fabric so the whole entry reads as one. A pair of french doors has its own quirks, which our french door page covers. Every shade here is made to the measurements you send and shipped direct to your door.