Motorized Roller Shades & Blinds

A roller shade is the easiest shade to motorize well. It is one flat piece of fabric on one tube, so the motor has a single job: turn the tube and stop in the same place every time. That makes motorized roller shades and blinds the natural choice for windows you cannot reach and for rows of windows you want to move together. Every shade on this page is made to the width and height you measure and shipped direct to you.

Which roller shades and blinds come motorized

All four of our roller styles take a motor. Light filtering roller shades soften daylight in a living room, kitchen or office. Blackout roller shades use fully opaque fabrics for bedrooms and media rooms. Solar shades are rollers woven from an open screen that cut glare and heat while keeping the view. Zebra shades carry alternating sheer and solid bands on a single roller, and the motor lets you fine tune the band position and save it.

The motor sits inside the roller tube, so nothing hangs down the side of the window. A rechargeable battery motor needs no wiring, a small solar panel keeps that battery topped up on a high window, and a plug-in motor runs from a nearby outlet and never needs charging. For smart home control, a Matter motor connects directly to Apple Home and also reaches Alexa and Google Home, while the standard motor reaches them through a hub. Every motor stores six positions, the top and bottom plus four in between.

Sizes: the motor sets the minimum, the fabric sets the maximum

A motorized roller needs more width than a manual one because the motor has to fit inside the tube. On our 3 1/2 inch squared cassette the motorized minimum is 20 1/8 inches. On the 2 15/16 inch squared and round cassettes and on the large squared cassette it is 20 1/2 inches, and on an open roll it is 21 1/4 inches. A manual clutch roller starts at 11 3/4 inches, so a very slim window may still be a manual job.

Maximum size depends on the fabric. On the 3 1/2 inch squared cassette a motorized light filtering shade reaches 98 3/8 inches wide and 137 3/4 inches high, while blackout and solar screen stop at 94 1/2 by 118 inches, because heavier goods are milled on narrower rolls. On the 2 15/16 inch cassettes light filtering reaches 96 inches wide and blackout 86 inches. Anything over 100 inches high moves to the large squared cassette with a thicker tube, which reaches 118 inches wide and 120 inches high. One more check before a wide order: if a fabric's roll is narrower than the system maximum, the roll width becomes the limit.

On the 2 15/16 inch cassettes, two shades can also share one headrail with a single motor driving both, so they move in step.

Measuring and installing a motorized roller yourself

Measure the width at the top, middle and bottom of the opening and use the smallest figure, then measure the height on both sides the same way. Give us the exact opening for an inside mount and the factory applies its own deduction.

Our cassette brackets go up with a 6 mm drill bit, and drywall and masonry anchors both come in the box. Each bracket has four pre-drilled holes: two screws on opposite sides hold on a sound wall, and the other two are for a weak wall or a wide, heavy shade. Hook the groove at the top of the cassette onto the bracket latch, press it back until it clicks, and check that both the top and the rear have locked before you let go.

Then pair the remote and set the upper and lower limits. Each can be fine tuned once, after which a change means resetting the motor, so take your time on the first pass.

If you are motorizing several windows in one room, order them together in the same fabric and cassette color so the hems line up, and put them on one multi-channel remote so a single press opens the whole wall.