One home, three fabric choices. Light cream shades in the tall great room, sheer screens in the entry, and dark textured fabric in the bedrooms.
How do you plan roller shades for a whole home in La Jolla?
Room by room, with one family of hardware. This La Jolla home got roller shades throughout, but the fabric changes with what each room is for.
The great room sets the tone. It rises two stories, with a big crystal chandelier, polished stone floors laid on the diagonal, and tall walls with the windows set deep into the plaster. Up high, a row of upper windows lets in sky. Down low, the main windows sit in recessed openings on two walls. Each one got a cream roller shade with a matching fascia across the top.
Keeping every shade in the house on the same style of fascia and bracket ties very different rooms together. The great room, the entry, the family room and the bedrooms do not look alike, but their windows read as one plan. Only the fabric shifts.
It is the same approach we take with most window treatments in La Jolla, where homes often mix grand rooms with ordinary bedrooms. You pick the hardware once. Then you pick the fabric for each room's light and privacy needs.
What roller shade fabric works best in a great room with a chandelier?
A light, soft fabric that filters the sun without darkening the room. In this great room, cream shades take the glare off the stone floor and let the chandelier do its job.
A crystal chandelier changes the light problem. When sun hits it directly, it throws hundreds of little rainbow spots across every wall. You can see them all over the photos. Pretty for a minute. In a room with a television or a dining table, it gets old fast.
Lowering the shades on the sunny side softens that. The fabric spreads the light out, so the crystals sparkle without scattering hard dots everywhere. The stone floor stops reflecting bright patches up into your eyes.
The recessed openings made the fit look intentional. Each shade mounts inside its niche, with the fascia flush against the top, so the walls stay smooth and flat. Pulled up, the fabric tucks out of sight behind the fascia and the window niches look bare and architectural. Our roller shades are cut to each opening, which matters here because deep plaster niches are rarely the same width top to bottom.
Why use sheer screen roller shades in an entry?
Because you still want to see out. An entry is where you check who is at the door or watch the street, and a sheer screen fabric keeps that view while cutting the glare.
This entry has pale green walls with white picture frame molding and crown trim. Two tall, narrow windows sit side by side in the middle of the paneling. A solid fabric there would have turned them into two blank rectangles in a very detailed wall.
Instead we used a light screen. Lowered, you can still make out the trees, the sky and the street through the weave. The bright sun outside gets knocked back, and the stone floor stops glaring. It works best in daylight, since screens are see through in both directions once it is dark out and the lights are on inside.
Up close the screen gives a faint wavy pattern in photos, which is just the camera catching the weave. In person you see the view through it. Both shades stop a few inches above the sill in the photo, leaving a strip of clear glass. That is a nice resting spot for an entry window. Full light at the bottom, softer light above.
What fabric should you use on bedroom roller shades?
A heavier, darker fabric than the living spaces. In this home the bedrooms got a charcoal fabric with a woven, linen look texture, and a matching fabric wrapped fascia across the top.
Dark fabric does two things in a bedroom. It holds back far more light than the cream shades downstairs, and it hides the glow that light colored fabrics give off at dawn. Against the soft gray walls, the charcoal reads as a deliberate accent instead of a hole in the wall. Another bedroom uses a light cream fabric on a pair of windows over a garden. The bedrooms did not all have to match.
The family room went the other way, with light shades on two big windows beside a wood built in, which suits a room that sees most of its use in the daytime. If you want a bedroom fully dark, our guide to blackout shades in San Diego walks through fabric and mounting choices.
Planning shades for more than a room or two? Book a free in-home consultation and we will walk the whole house with you, bringing screen, light filtering and darker fabrics to hold up in every room.