Roller Shades & Blinds for Bow Windows

A bow window curves gently out from the wall in a run of four, five or six panes, and it is usually the brightest spot in the room. Each pane faces a slightly different direction, so the sun moves across the curve all day. Roller shades and blinds for bow windows give every pane its own flat, clean shade that rolls up into a closed cassette, so the curve reads as one tidy band when the shades are down and nearly disappears when they are up. Every shade is made to measure for its own pane and shipped direct to you.

Roller shade options for a bow window

Light filtering roller shades are the everyday choice for a bow in a living room or dining area. They soften daylight and screen the view in from the street.

Blackout roller shades suit a bow in a bedroom, or one that faces west and takes the low evening sun.

Solar shades are for the bow you bought the house for. The screen fabric comes in 1, 3, 5 and 10 percent openness, blocking roughly 80, 70, 60 and 50 percent of the light, so you can cut glare and heat and still see the garden.

Zebra shades run alternating sheer and solid bands on one roller. Slide the bands past each other and a pane moves from a soft screen to a closed face without raising the shade.

A few design notes. Use one fabric and one cassette color on every pane, because a bow is always seen as a whole. Cassettes come in white, beige, grey and black; matching the window frame lets the row of cassettes read as part of the architecture. Keep every shade at the same height when it is partly lowered so the bottom bars line up around the curve.

Minimum widths decide what fits each pane

Bow panes are often narrow, so the smallest width a lift system can build matters more here than the largest. On our squared CB-235 cassette, a chain operated roller shade starts at 11 3/4 inches wide, a motorized one at 20 1/8 inches and a cordless one at 23 5/8 inches, because the spring sits inside the tube. On the smaller CB-268 cassette, cordless starts at 19 3/4 inches and motorized at 20 1/2 inches, but that cassette stops at 80 inches of drop. If your panes are under 20 inches wide, a chain operated shade is the dependable choice.

Fabric sets the top end. Light filtering reaches 98 3/8 inches wide on CB-235, while blackout and solar fabrics stop at 94 1/2 inches because they are milled on narrower rolls. A motor can run from a remote, a wall switch or an app, and works with Alexa, Google Home and Apple HomePod.

Measuring and installing it yourself

Measure every pane on its own, even when they look identical, and label each figure from left to right. Decide on inside or outside mount for the whole bow so the cassettes sit at one depth. The CB-235 cassette is about 3 1/2 inches square and CB-268 about 2 15/16 inches, so check that the frame is deep enough before you choose inside mount. If a casement crank or a deep sill gets in the way, ask for a reverse roll, which hangs the fabric off the front of the tube and clears it.

Each cassette hangs on two brackets. Drill with a 6 mm (0.2 inch) bit, set the screws 1.1 inches apart, and use the anchor that matches your wall, since drywall and masonry anchors both come in the box. Hook the valance groove onto the bracket latch, press back until it clicks, and check that the top and the rear are both locked before you let go. To take a shade down later, press the metal washer at the back of the bracket rather than prying from the front.

Order samples and hold them against the curve at midday and at dusk, then send us the width and height of every pane. We will build each roller shade to its own opening and ship the set to your door.