A cozy sitting room with one large window facing the street. A single white light filtering roller shade gives it privacy without losing the daylight.
What does a light filtering roller shade do in a sitting room that faces the street?
It keeps the daylight and drops the view in from the street. With the shade down, this Del Mar sitting room still glows, but people on the sidewalk see a soft white panel instead of the chair and sofa.
The window is the whole point of the room. It fills most of one wall, a wide center pane with narrow panes on each side, and it looks straight out to the front yard, a young tree, the sidewalk and parked cars across the street. That is a nice outlook from the sheepskin chair. It also means anyone walking by can see right in.
A light filtering roller shade handles that trade. The fabric is dense enough to blur shapes but open enough to pass plenty of light, so the room stays usable with the shade down all afternoon. In the closed photo you can see tree shadows playing across the fabric. Pretty, and a good sign the shade is letting real daylight through rather than turning the room into a cave.
Can one roller shade cover a window this wide?
Yes. This window is a single opening with no door in it, so one shade across the full width is simpler and cleaner than splitting it.
One shade means one clean edge across the bottom, no seams of light between panels, and one lift to work instead of three. Splitting it would have put two vertical lines across the middle of the view. With no door to open, there was no reason to.
Width does have limits. A wider shade needs a stiffer tube so the fabric does not sag in the middle, and very wide fabric can start to wave at the edges if the tube is undersized. We size the tube to the width and fabric weight when we build each shade, which is why a custom roller shade hangs flat where a store bought one at this width often droops.
Raised, the shade rolls up into a white cassette at the top of the opening. It covers only a small strip of the glass, and the yard and street come back into full view. Lowered partway, it takes the glare off the low window while you still see the tree.
Should a roller shade be inside or outside mount on a large window?
Inside mount when the opening is deep enough, which this one was. The shade sits within the window opening, so the white wall around it stays clean and the window keeps its own shape.
That matters in a room this simple. The walls are plain, the floor is polished concrete, and the decor does the talking: a brass floor lamp, a sconce, a rattan bar cart and a black side table. A shade hanging on the wall outside the opening would have made the window look bigger and heavier than it is. Inside, it just reads as part of the window.
There is a small cost. An inside mount leaves a slim gap at each side, and a bit of light shows along the edges when the shade is down. In a sitting room that is fine. A bedroom that needs dark would be a different call, often an outside mount or a blackout fabric.
Before we choose, we check frame depth and square. Plenty of openings are out of square by a little, and a shade that fits at the top can rub at the bottom. It is one of the first things we check on window treatments in Del Mar, where many homes have big picture windows like this one.
How do you pick a light filtering fabric for a Del Mar home?
Start with the light you want inside, then the privacy you need. For a street facing sitting room, a white or off white light filtering fabric is usually the right balance.
White fabric bounces daylight into the room and keeps the window bright from inside. Darker fabrics are easier to see through toward the view, but they also make the window read as a dark block with the shade down. In this room, with light walls and a light sofa, white kept everything calm. It also looks neat from the street.
Coastal light is bright and changes through the day, and a lot of homes here have big windows like this one. Our notes on window treatments in La Jolla and Del Mar cover how we handle glare and views in the beach towns.
The best way to choose is to see fabric in your own light. Samples look different at noon than they do on a screen. Book a free in-home consultation and we will bring swatches, hold them in your window and measure while we are there.