Noise Reducing Shades & Blinds

Traffic outside, a neighbour's dog, a flight path, an apartment where the glass is the thinnest thing between you and everyone else. A window covering is not a wall, but a heavy, close-fitting, layered shade is a different object from a thin flat one. Said straight before the rest: Coverly does not publish an acoustic rating for these shades, so nothing here promises a decibel figure. What we can tell you is what each one is made of, how heavy it is, and how tightly it fits.

The heaviest and most layered shades we build

Woven wood shades carry the heaviest fabrics in the range by a wide margin. The weaves run from light open patterns around 160 g/m2 up to dense bamboo and bamboo-slat constructions at 1533 g/m2, and a liner turns a decorative open weave into a closed one. A blackout liner is specified at 100% blackout in nine colours, and it is applied to both the shade and the valance, so no open section is left at the top.

Cellular shades are the layered option. The pleated cell sits as a structure between the glass and the room rather than as a single flat plane, and at 38 mm we also build cell-in-cell, a cell inside a cell rather than one chamber. It is exclusive to 38 mm and comes in light filtering and blackout.

Blackout roller shades are the heaviest flat goods we make, running from roughly 305 to 430 g/m2, with a sunscreen blackout at 663 g/m2 at the top. A roller will not layer the way a cell does, but if mass at the glass is what you want, that is where it is concentrated.

Sizes, liners and the constraints that apply

Woven wood caps at 96 inches wide on every operating system. Wider openings take multiple shades on one headrail up to 118 inches total, though a common valance still stops at 96 inches. Height depends on the lift: cordless reaches 106 inches while clutch, wand and motor all reach 118, because a cordless spring has to balance the shade across the whole travel while a clutch or motor holds position mechanically.

Two liner notes before you order. An attached liner is integrated behind the main fabric and reads as one seamless piece. A movable liner is a second independently operated layer, needing a deeper headrail at about 3 1/8 inches, and it cannot be combined with a top down bottom up build. Natural fabrics are also not suited to high humidity rooms, so woven wood is not the pick for a bathroom.

On the roller side, blackout runs narrower than light filtering everywhere: 86 inches against 96 on our standard cassettes, 94 1/2 against 98 3/8 on the larger ones. On cellular, cordless builds down to 12 inches wide and high, while a motorised 38 mm cellular needs 23 inches minimum width.

Measuring and installing them yourself

If a close fit at the edges is the point, an outside mount is usually better, since an inside mount leaves the frame reveal open at the sides. For an inside mount, take 1/4 inch off the measured width. For an outside mount, add roughly 3 7/8 inches to both width and height. On woven wood inside mounts, measure the width at top, centre and bottom and use the smallest figure rounded down to the nearest 1/8 inch.

Roller and cellular shades fit with cassette brackets. You need a 6 mm drill bit, screw spacing is marked at 1.1 inches, and two anchor types ship in the box. Each bracket has four pre-drilled holes; two screws on opposite sides hold a normal shade, and the other two are there for the heavy and wide ones, which is most of this page. Woven wood uses its own bracket and needs a minimum 1 5/8 inch frame depth, or 2 5/8 inches for a flush inside fit.

Order samples if weight and weave are what you are choosing on, because a 400 g/m2 weave and a 1000 g/m2 weave photograph almost identically and feel nothing alike in the hand. Everything here is made to measure, shipped direct, and carries a limited lifetime warranty against defects.