Solar Shades, Drapery or Shutters? Choosing Window Treatments for Florida Sun

A west-facing slider in Boca Raton does something to a room by four in the afternoon that a north window in another state never will: the light comes in low and hot, the television turns into a mirror, and the sofa arm nearest the glass starts to look lighter than the rest. Window treatments get bought to fix one of those complaints, so name the problem in each room and let it point to the treatment. Most Florida rooms end up with two layers on the same window; that is how each layer gets to do one job well.

Name the problem in each room before you pick a product

Walk the house at the hour each room actually gets used and write down what bothers you.

• Heat and glare. West and south exposures take direct sun for hours, and the screen washes out whatever the air conditioning does.
• Fading. Sun is hard on fabric, leather and wood; a sofa in a bar of afternoon light from a slider changes color over the years, glass side first.
• Privacy after dark. Close-set lots make a lit room fully visible from the street at night.
• Blackout for sleeping. Bedrooms need a darkness the rest of the house does not, and an early Florida sunrise makes that a daily issue.
• The view. A canal, a fairway or a pool deck is often why the house was bought; covering it all day defeats the point.
• Sliders that open every day. Anything on a patio door has to move fully out of the way, or it will be left open and doing nothing.

Once that list exists, the treatments sort themselves; few do everything, which is why layering comes up later.

Solar shades for the view, roller shades for the night

A solar shade is a screen: woven fabric on a roller that you look through rather than at. Lowered, it takes the glare out of the window while the palms and the pool stay visible, and less direct sun reaches whatever sits behind it. That is why it is the usual first choice over sliders and across living room windows, where the view matters.

The fabric's openness factor is easier to understand as a dial than as a spec. Turn it toward a looser weave and the view sharpens while the glare creeps back in; turn it toward a denser weave and the room cools and gains daytime privacy while the view goes hazy. Hold a sample against the actual window at the hour the sun hits it, because a canal view and a window onto the neighbor's wall want different settings.

At night the situation flips: dark outside, lit inside, and the screen that hid you from the street at noon reads as nearly transparent from the sidewalk. That is why a solar shade is so often paired with something else. A standard roller shade uses the same mechanism with an opaque or blackout fabric and settles night privacy outright.

Drapery: the soft layer that also handles blackout

Modern interiors are full of hard, flat surfaces, and drapery brings fabric, weight and vertical line into a room; simple, plain panels soften a contemporary house without making it look traditional.

Lined drapery is also the usual route to darkness. A blackout lining behind the face fabric, with panels that overlap at the center and return to the wall at the sides, gets a bedroom darker than a shade alone usually can. If the bed and nightstands are being chosen at the same time, pick the drapery fabric in the same sitting so the headboard and the panels do not argue.

On a slider, drapery stacks: a pair of panels on a track pushes to one side or splits to both, leaving the glass clear so the door stays in use. The stack is the thing to plan for: give it wall on either side of the glass so an open pair of panels does not cover the view it was bought to frame.

Roman shades: tailored, and better on a window than a door

A Roman shade is fabric that gathers into a stack of flat folds at the top of the window: the finished look of drapery in the footprint of a shade, lined for blackout or left light-filtering. It works over a kitchen sink, in a home office, and on a bedroom window that is not also the way out to the patio. It does not work on a slider you walk through every day; the folded bundle covers part of the glass even when raised. Put drapery or a roller on the door and save the Roman for the window beside it.

Shutters and blinds: the architectural choice

Plantation shutters are less a covering than a piece of the house. Hinged panels with wide louvers fit inside or over the frame, and the louvers tilt to angle light and privacy without lifting anything. They read as permanent and built in.

The material question is about moisture. A wood louver in a bathroom that steams up twice a day, or beside a kitchen sink, will not stay straight through many summers; faux wood holds its line in those rooms, and where the air stays dry, wood is the nicer material. In a modern interior, shutters look right when kept simple: wide louvers and a finish that matches the trim or the floor. Wood and faux-wood blinds do the same tilting job at a smaller scale, which suits secondary rooms.

Layering: one window, two jobs

Rooms tend to have more than one problem, and the fix is usually two treatments on the same window.

• The main living room window. A solar shade for daytime glare and view, with drapery panels on a wider rod for softness and privacy after dark; the shade works all day, the panels close in the evening.
• A bedroom. A blackout roller inside the frame does the sleeping, but an inside mount leaves a thin line of light down each side at sunrise; a sheer in front softens that edge and keeps the room from feeling like a box by day.
• A wall of sliders. A run of solar shades across the span, with one drapery track above them so the panels stack to the ends whenever the doors are in use; the shades handle the sun, the drapery handles the evening and takes the echo out of a room that is all glass and tile.

When motorization earns its place

High clerestory windows, a two-story wall of glass, or a shade behind a sofa nobody can reach are places where a cord will not get used, and an unused shade solves nothing. A motor also lets sun control run on a schedule: west-side shades lower in the afternoon and rise in the evening. It needs power, either rechargeable batteries or a wire, and in a build or renovation that wire can be planned into the design.

From the showroom to your windows

At SoBe Furniture the work starts on the floor at 6599 N Federal Hwy in Boca Raton, where you sit with a designer for a design consultation and go through fabrics, louver widths, finishes and controls with the furniture around you. There is no charge for that first meeting; bringing window photos and rough sizes means you leave with choices instead of a to-do list. After you have chosen, each window is measured at your house, and only then does fabrication start; professional installation finishes the job. A custom closet planned in the same visit is measured at the home the same way. The treatments SoBe makes are listed on the custom window treatments page.

Questions that come up

Will a solar shade keep people from seeing in at night?

No. With the room lit and the outside dark, a screen fabric reads as nearly clear from the street; pair it with an opaque roller, drapery or shutters.

Which treatment suits a slider I open every day?

Drapery on a track that stacks fully to the side, or a solar or roller shade with the control on the side you approach from. Keep Roman shades off a door in constant use.

Do I have to choose everything before the measurement?

Fabrics and styles are chosen at the showroom with a designer, and the final measurements at your home come after, so the dimensions match the treatment being made.

Decide what the sun is doing in each room, choose the treatment that fixes it, and add a second layer only where the first one leaves a gap.

See it in person: our Boca Raton showroom at 6599 N Federal Hwy is open seven days a week.