Privacy Shades & Blinds for French Doors

French doors bring in a lot of light, and that is exactly the problem when the glass faces a street, a shared hallway or a neighbor's window. You want the room screened, but the doors still have to swing, the handles still have to work, and the frame around each pane is often shallow and narrow. A privacy shade for a French door has to fit the glass on each door closely, stay put when the door moves, and leave the handle clear. The shades and blinds on this page are the ones we build for that, made to measure per door and shipped direct.

Which privacy shades and blinds work on French doors

Light filtering and blackout cellular shades are the most forgiving fit. Cordless cellular starts at just 12 inches wide, and a top down bottom up build starts at 12 inches wide and 8 inches high, so it suits a slim door pane. Top down bottom up is the classic French door privacy setup: lower the top rail to let daylight in over the shade while the lower half stays closed at eye level. Cellular also offers a no-drill mount, useful on a door you would rather not drill into.

Light filtering roller shades give a clean, flat look on each door. They screen the view in while passing daylight, with shading from roughly 45% to 70% depending on the fabric series, so read the figure rather than the name.

Zebra shades let you adjust privacy without raising the shade. Offset the sheer and solid bands to close the sightline, or line them up for a softened view out.

Light filtering roman shades add softer folds when the doors open onto a dining room or bedroom and you want the doors to read as part of the decor rather than hardware.

Minimum widths, handles and frame depth

On a French door the smallest size usually decides the product, not the largest. A manual roller with a bead chain starts at 11 3/4 inches wide. Cordless roller needs more room for the spring: 19 3/4 inches on our 2 15/16 inch square and round cassettes and 23 5/8 inches on our 3 1/2 inch squared cassette. Motorized roller needs 8 to 10 inches more width than the manual version of the same shade, and motorized cellular needs 23 inches, so motors rarely suit a single door pane.

Handles are the next check. If a lever or knob sits close to the glass, a roller shade can be ordered with a reverse roll, which hangs the fabric off the front of the tube so it clears a handle or a deep sill. For cellular, an outside mount on the door face often clears the handle more easily than squeezing inside a shallow frame.

The cassette itself takes up space too, at 2 15/16 or 3 1/2 inches square depending on the system, so measure the depth around the glass before you choose inside mount.

Measuring and installing them yourself

Measure each door separately, even when a pair looks identical. Decide inside or outside mount before you measure. For cellular inside mount, take 1/4 inch off the measured width to clear the frame. For a cellular 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 roman shades hang on a cassette bracket. You need a 6 mm drill bit, the brackets mark at 1.1 inch screw spacing, and two types of anchor ship in the box so you can match the anchor to your door or wall. Each bracket has four pre-drilled holes, and two screws on opposite sides hold it. Hook the valance onto the bracket latch, press it back until it clicks, and check that both top and rear are locked before you open and close the door.

Order samples and tape them to the glass, then check the view from outside at dusk, when a lit room is easiest to see into.