Privacy Shades & Blinds for Sliding Glass Doors

A sliding glass door is usually the biggest piece of glass in the house, and it tends to face the yard, the patio or the neighbors. That is great for daylight and terrible for privacy, because anyone outside gets a full view of the room. The goal is to screen that view without turning the door into a wall you have to open and close every time someone walks through. The shades and blinds here are built for that job, made to measure and shipped direct.

Which privacy shades and blinds suit a slider

Zebra shades are the most flexible privacy answer on a door. The sheer and solid bands slide past each other, so you can line them up for daylight and a softened view or offset them to close the sightline, without raising the shade at all.

Light filtering roller and cellular shades keep a room bright while blocking the view in. Read the shading figure rather than the name: our light filtering roller fabrics run from roughly 45% to 70% shading depending on the series. A light filtering cellular shade built top down bottom up lets you drop the top rail for daylight while the lower half stays covered at eye level.

Woven wood shades soften a large run of glass and become a privacy shade through the liner. On their own the weaves are about 50% see-through, so for a door that faces a neighbor, choose a light filtering or blackout liner in one of nine colors each.

Solar shades keep your view of the yard by day while screening the room, from 1% openness at 80% shading to 10% at 50%. Blackout roller and cellular shades are 100% blackout, the choice when the slider is in a bedroom or the evening view in is the real complaint.

Covering the width, and splitting it for privacy

Most of our roller and woven wood systems build a single shade up to 96 inches wide. Blackout roller fabrics stop sooner, at 86 inches on several cassettes, because the heavier goods are milled on narrower rolls. Past 96 inches we build two shades on one continuous headrail: up to 118 inches total on woven wood, and as a 2-on-1 headrail on our square and round roller cassettes.

That split is a privacy tool in its own right. With the separate system, each panel operates on its own, so you can keep the panel over the fixed glass down all day and raise only the side you walk through. The middle mechanism option drives both panels together from one clutch or motor, and it is not available cordless.

Cellular reaches further than either. A bead chain cellular shade runs to 197 inches wide in one piece, and a top down bottom up version with a dual bead chain does too. Cordless cellular is the narrower option at 94 to 98 inches wide.

Measuring and installing it yourself

Outside mount is the usual choice on a slider, since the shade can clear the handle and the door track. For a cellular shade mounted outside, add about 3 7/8 inches to both width and height so the shade overlaps the opening and closes the gap at the edges. For an inside mount, cellular takes 1/4 inch off the measured width; for woven wood, give us exact measurements and the factory applies the deduction. If a handle sits close to a roller shade, reverse roll hangs the fabric off the front of the tube to clear it.

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 your wall. Each bracket has four pre-drilled holes, and on a wide door the extra two are worth using. Hook the valance onto the bracket latch, press back until it clicks, and check both top and rear are locked.

Order samples and hold them against the door at midday and after dark before you choose a fabric. Tell us the opening width, and we will confirm whether it is one shade or two.