Sunroom Shades & Blinds

A sunroom is mostly glass, and that is the whole problem. The glazing that makes the room worth having turns it into the hottest room in the house by mid-afternoon, throws glare across every surface, and gives back little once the sun drops. Sunroom windows also run wider and taller than the rest of the house and sit in runs of three or four, so whatever goes on them has to work as a set. These shades and blinds are made to your exact opening sizes and shipped direct.

Which shades work in a sunroom

Solar shades are the starting point. They are sold by openness, and that number is the trade between view and screening: our sunscreen fabrics run at 1%, 3%, 5% and 10% openness, blocking roughly 80%, 70%, 60% and 50% of light respectively. A 1% or 3% screen on a west-facing wall takes out the worst of the afternoon glare while leaving the view intact. A 5% or 10% screen suits a north or east wall.

Light filtering roller shades cover the same daytime brief in a wider fabric range when the look of the room matters more than the view. Light filtering cellular is worth pairing in if your sunroom is a three-season room you want to use in four, since the cell structure traps a layer of air at the glass that a flat fabric cannot. Woven wood suits sunrooms well: natural fabrics are not suited to high-humidity rooms and moisture damage is a listed warranty exclusion, but a dry sunny room is where they belong. Zebra gives you sheer and solid bands you can line up through the day.

Sizes, openness and lift systems

Width decides most sunroom orders. Light filtering roller fabrics reach 96 inches wide on our standard squared cassettes and 98 3/8 inches on the larger ones, while blackout and sunscreen goods stop at 86 or 94 1/2 inches on the same hardware, because the heavier goods are milled on narrower rolls. Fabric roll width also overrides the system maximum: if the fabric is narrower than the system allows, the fabric is the limit. Most sunscreen fabrics run on 118 inch rolls, so solar has the most headroom.

Anything over 100 inches high moves to the 43 mm tube and the large cassette, reaching 118 inches wide and 120 inches high. That is a load question rather than a preference: a 38 mm tube will not carry that drop. Woven wood caps at 96 inches wide on every operating system, and wider openings take multiple shades on one headrail up to 118 inches total, though a shared valance still caps at 96 inches.

If you want the run motorized, check minimum width first. A motorized roller needs 8 to 10 inches more minimum width than the manual version of the same shade, and motorized cellular at 38 mm needs 23 inches and caps at 79 inches high. Motors can be solar-powered, the sensible answer for high sunroom windows you would rather not take down twice a year to charge.

Measuring and installing them yourself

Measure each opening separately even when the windows look identical, then choose inside or outside mount per window. For an inside mount, reduce the measured width by 1/4 inch to clear the frame. For an outside mount, add roughly 3 7/8 inches to width and height to close the light gap.

Installation is a bracket job. You need a 6 mm drill bit, the brackets mark at 1.1 inch screw spacing, and two types of expansion anchor ship in the box: pick the one matching your wall rather than whichever is on top. Each bracket has four pre-drilled holes, and two screws on opposite sides hold fine on a normal wall, with the other two there for wide or heavy shades. Hook the valance groove onto the bracket latch, press back until it clicks, and check both top and rear are locked.

Order fabric samples first if you are choosing an openness percentage, because the difference between a 1% and a 5% screen is hard to judge from a photo. Everything here carries a limited lifetime warranty against defects in materials and workmanship.