A split level home with vaulted ceilings, a wooden whale hanging over the stairs. Matching white roller shades in the kitchen and the entry hall.
What roller shades work for a kitchen and entry hall that share one view?
Matching light filtering roller shades. When two windows can be seen from the same spot, using the same fabric and color on both keeps the space calm and makes it feel like one design.
This Rancho Bernardo home is a split level. Stand at the top of the stairs and you see both windows at once: the wide kitchen window over the sink on one side, and the tall entry hall window beside the front door on the other. Above them hangs a big wooden whale sculpture, and woven baskets dress the stair wall.
The decor is coastal. The walls are plain white.
With that much going on overhead, the windows needed to stay quiet. We used white roller shades with a soft woven texture in both spots, so the fabric blends into the white walls and lets the whale and the baskets do the talking. Rancho Bernardo sits inside the City of San Diego, and this kind of open, vaulted split level shows up a lot in our work on window treatments in San Diego.
Are roller shades a good choice over a kitchen sink?
Yes. A roller shade has a flat, smooth face, so there are no slats to collect grease or water spots, and it rolls up tight so the window stays easy to reach.
The kitchen window here is wide and set into a drywall opening with no trim, just a wood sill. Right below it is a deep stainless sink with a tall pull down faucet, a black countertop and a patterned tile backsplash. A cushioned banquette wraps the corner to the right.
We fit the shade inside the opening so it sits flush with the wall. Lowered, the light filtering fabric turns hard afternoon sun into an even glow across the counter.
You can still tell it is daytime, and you can cook without squinting. Lifted, it tucks into a slim roll at the top, out of the way of the faucet and anything on the sill. For a window you reach across a sink to use, that clearance matters more than people expect. Our light filtering roller shades come in many fabric weaves, and we pick ones that wipe clean easily for kitchens.
How do you cover a tall window next to a front door?
With a shade that can sit partway down. A roller shade on an entry window lets you cover the top for glare and privacy while leaving the bottom open to see who is at the door.
The entry hall window here sits high on a wall beside the front door, at the landing where the stairs come down. It looks out toward a bamboo screen and a paver walkway. With the door open, as in the photo, the shade is partly lowered and the lower glass still shows the yard.
This window got an outside mount, with the shade fixed to the wall just above the opening. That covers the window edges fully and gives the shade a bit more width than the glass, so less light leaks around the sides.
Tall, odd sized windows like this are where stock shades fall short. A store bought roller rarely fits the width exactly, and a gap on either side shows up right away against a white wall. We cover that in more detail in our post on custom vs off the shelf blinds.
Why use the same roller shade in every room of an open home?
Because in an open home you see several windows at the same time. Matching shades make the space read as one, while mixed products and colors make it look pieced together.
Split levels and homes with open stairwells are the clearest case. From the stairs in this house you can see the kitchen, the entry hall and the landing in one look. If the kitchen had a roller shade and the entry hall had a blind in a different white, the eye would catch on that difference every time.
Keeping one fabric also makes life easier. Both shades raise and lower the same way, and they age the same way in the sun, so one window never looks newer than the other.
That does not mean every window must get the same mount. The kitchen shade sits inside its opening and the entry shade sits outside, each picked for what that window needed. If your home has windows that all show from one spot, book a free in-home consultation and we will bring fabric samples so you can see them against your own walls.