A bedroom with a full wall of glass sliders onto a covered patio. Four charcoal blackout roller shades make it dark at night and disappear during the day.
Can blackout roller shades cover a whole wall of sliding doors in a bedroom?
Yes, and they are one of the cleanest ways to do it. In this San Diego bedroom, four blackout roller shades cover a full wall of glass sliders, and when they come down the room goes dark.
The wall is almost all glass. Four tall panels run from the floor nearly to the ceiling, with the sliding door near the middle, a covered patio outside, and a glass railing and trees past that. Lovely for morning coffee. Not so lovely for sleeping in, with the bed a few feet from the glass.
Drapery was an option. But heavy blackout panels need room to stack at each side when they open, and this wall runs right into a piece of art on one end and a corner on the other. Blackout roller shades roll up into a slim band at the top, so all of the glass stays usable and nothing crowds the art.
If you are weighing the same choice for your own bedroom, our guide to blackout shades in San Diego walks through fabrics, mounts and the places light likes to sneak in.
Why split a slider wall into four blackout shades instead of one?
Width, weight and the door. One shade across a wall this wide would need a very long tube and a heavy roll of blackout fabric, and you would have to raise the whole thing every time someone wanted to step outside.
Four shades solve all three. Each one lines up with its own glass panel, so the shade over the door can go up while the rest stay down. Smaller rolls are also lighter to lift. They track straighter over the years, which matters on fabric this tall.
There is one honest trade off. Where two shades meet, a thin line of light shows at the seam, and you can see it glowing in the closed photo at dusk. We keep those gaps as tight as the brackets allow and land each seam over a door frame, so it reads as part of the wall.
For most bedrooms that sliver is worth having a door that works. A room that needs total dark, such as for a night shift sleeper, can add side channels or a drapery layer on top.
Do blackout roller shades block the patio view when they are open?
No. Raised all the way, they tuck up under the fascia and the glass is clear from the top of the frame to the floor.
That comes from mounting them outside the frame. The brackets sit on the wall above the sliders, so the rolled fabric hangs over wall instead of glass. Pull them up and you see the whole patio: the outdoor sectional, the rug, the glass railing and the green trees behind it. Nothing hangs down into the top of the view.
The halfway point earns its keep too. Lower the shades partway and the top of the glass is shaded while you still see the patio and keep the room bright. On a sunny afternoon that takes the glare off the bed and the oak floor without shutting the room in.
Charcoal fabric helps. A dark shade sits quietly against the white walls by day and nearly vanishes against the glass at night. A white blackout fabric would glow when the sun hits it. We use a lot of darker fabrics on bedroom glass for that reason, and it is a regular part of the window treatments in San Diego we plan for homes with big sliders.
What details make blackout roller shades look finished over sliders?
The fascia and the hem. Look up at these shades and you see a fascia wrapped in the same charcoal weave, finished with black end caps, instead of a bare roll of fabric on a tube.
That fascia hides the tube, the brackets and the top edge of the fabric. It also blocks light that would spill over the top of the roll, which is where many outside mount blackout shades leak. Below it, each shade ends in a weighted hem bar. It keeps the fabric hanging flat.
Wrapping the fascia in shade fabric keeps the wall to one color and one texture, so from the bed it reads as a single band across the top of the glass.
On a wall this wide, think about motors. Motorized shades let you raise all four together from a remote or your phone, with no reaching behind furniture. If a wall of glass keeps your bedroom brighter than you want, book a free in-home consultation and we will measure it and hold fabric samples up against your own light.
