A primary bedroom with a glass door to the garden between two windows, plus a bathroom window over a jetted tub. Roller shades on the windows, a cellular shade on the door.
Which shades work best for a bedroom with a glass door between two windows?
Roller shades on the windows and a cellular shade on the door. In this Del Mar bedroom that split gave every opening the right fit while keeping one calm color across the wall.
The room has warm tan walls, white trim, and a dark four poster bed that takes up the middle of the floor. One wall holds a glass door out to the garden with a window on each side, and there is another window beside the bed. The windows are wide, simple openings. A roller shade suits them well: one flat panel of fabric, a slim roll at the top, and nothing to dust. We used a light oatmeal fabric that sits close to the wall color, so lowered halfway the shades almost disappear and the green outside does the talking.
The door is a different problem. A roller hung above it would block the door from opening or swing around every time someone walked out. So the door got its own shade, mounted on the door itself.
How do cellular shades mount on a glass patio door?
They mount right on the door, inside the raised trim that frames the glass. The shade opens and closes with the door, so it never gets in the way of the handle or the frame.
On this door the glass panel sits inside a white molded frame, and the cellular shade fits within that frame from top to bottom. Raised partway, you get a clear view of the stone pavers and hedge outside while the top half stays covered. Down, the door reads as one soft white panel that matches the trim. We chose cellular shades here because the pleats stack very small when raised, which keeps the glass clear, and the profile is shallow enough that the door still closes against its stop.
Door shades get bumped more than any other shade in the house. Every trip outside swings it. A shallow honeycomb on a door mount handles that better than a heavier fabric or a slatted blind, which can rattle against the glass. It also adds a little insulation to what is usually the thinnest part of the wall.
What kind of shade works over a jetted tub in a bathroom?
A roller shade in a fabric that shrugs off humidity. It has no cells or slats to hold moisture, and it wipes clean.
This window sits right above a jetted tub, set into a granite surround. The glass is already textured, so in daylight nobody can see detail through it. At night is another story. With the lights on inside, textured glass glows and shows shapes moving behind it, which is the last thing you want over a bathtub. The roller shade fixes that, and we matched the same linen look fabric used in the bedroom so the two rooms feel connected.
Mounting matters in a wet room. The shade sits high on the wall above the window opening, out of the splash zone, and the bottom rail stops above the tile. Steam from a long soak rises and clears without soaking into the fabric. When you want light, roll it up and the textured glass still gives you privacy on its own. We use this same pairing in a lot of bathrooms when we plan window treatments in Del Mar.
How do you keep light from leaking around bedroom roller shades?
Close the gaps at the sides. Most light that sneaks past a roller comes in along the edges, not through the fabric.
On this window the shade drops between white side channels that run down both edges to the sill. They narrow the strip of light that a standard roller leaves along each side, and they keep the fabric from drifting when a window is open. With a heavier fabric, channels like these are how you get a bedroom close to dark. Our guide to blackout shades goes deeper on fabric choices and mounts.
The other lever is the mount itself. An outside mount that overlaps the trim by a couple of inches on each side blocks more light than an inside mount, and it can make a window look bigger. If you live in Del Mar and want to see how a roller, a door shade, and a bathroom fabric would look together in your own rooms, book a free in-home consultation and we will bring the samples.
