A wide family room window right beside the TV, facing the tile roofs next door. A sheer horizontal shade with fabric vanes handles the glare and the view.
How do sheer horizontal shades work on a wide family room window?
They hang soft fabric vanes between two layers of sheer. Tilt the vanes open and you see out through the sheer, tilt them closed and the room gets private and dim.
This Rancho Bernardo family room has one wide picture window set into a deep wall, with the TV on a wood cabinet just to the left of it. Outside are the clay tile roofs of the neighboring houses and a lot of sky. Bare glass here meant two problems at once: the house next door could see in, and bright light from the side washed out the screen.
A sheer horizontal shade covers the whole window in one panel. In the photo the vanes are tilted open. You can still make out the roofline and the blue sky, but everything is softened, and the light falls into the room in even stripes instead of one hard beam. Turn the vanes a little further and the stripes fade into a soft glow.
Can you reduce TV glare without blacking out the room?
Yes. Angle the vanes so the light bounces up toward the ceiling instead of across the room at screen height.
That is the big advantage of a vane shade over a plain roller shade on a window like this. A roller shade is either down or up. It can dim the room, but it cannot steer light. The fabric vanes act a bit like the slats of a blind, only softer, so you can tilt them to aim daylight away from the TV and still keep the room bright enough to walk through.
The window sits so close to the TV that the side glare was the real issue. With the vanes partly closed, the screen stays readable in the afternoon. At night you close them all the way for privacy, since a lit family room is easy to see into from the outside.
When you want the full view, the whole shade lifts up into the headrail at the top of the window. Our sheer shades come in light filtering and room darkening vane fabrics, depending on how dark you need the room.
Do sheer shades help with inland heat in Rancho Bernardo?
They help some, mainly by cutting the direct sun that heats up the furniture and floor near the window. They are not insulation, so on the hottest days they work best together with good glass.
Rancho Bernardo sits inland, away from the marine layer, and summer afternoons there run hotter and brighter than on the coast. A wide window that catches that sun can warm a family room for hours. Closing the vanes partway blocks a good share of the direct light while the room still feels open. The sheer layers also cut some of the UV that fades a wood cabinet or a sofa over the years.
If heat is your main problem, we may point you toward a different product, such as a cellular shade or a solar screen, and we will say so at the consult. Our guide to the best window treatments for San Diego walks through those trade offs. In this family room the glare on the TV and the view from next door were the problems you could see, and the vanes handle both.
Why mount sheer horizontal shades inside a deep window frame?
A deep frame lets the whole headrail tuck inside the opening. The shade looks built in, and the wall around the window stays clean.
This window is set back into a thick wall, and we used that depth. The headrail sits up inside the top of the frame. The vanes run close to the glass from edge to edge, with only a slim line of light at each side. Nothing sticks out past the wall into the room, which matters when the TV cabinet sits only a foot or two away. Inside mounts do need an accurate measure, because the shade has to fit the opening at the top, middle and bottom. We take those numbers ourselves rather than relying on a quick tape measure.
We put in window treatments in San Diego neighborhoods from the coast to Rancho Bernardo, and wide family room windows like this one come up a lot. If yours has glare, a close neighbor or both, book a free in-home consultation and we will bring vane samples to try against your own light.
