June 8 2011 Newsletter

Sunroom Roman Shades



YA of Brooksville, Florida made these large shades for her sunroom. She sent this message along with the photographs: "I wanted to thank you for your wonderful website showing exactly how to make your own Roman shades. Everyone who has seen them is impressed with the results." From the photographs it appears that YA only covered the windows on one side of her sunroom. Perhaps it was too big of a job to do all of the windows or she only need for those windows to be covered since she continued in her message: "The completed shades were 51-inches wide and 62-inches long. They are east-facing windows and do a wonderful job of blocking the morning sun."

This photograph shows the room before the shades were installed. If she had covered the windows on both walls, how would she deal with the corner of the room? As you can see in the photograph above, the raised, folded shade projects about 2-inches out from the wall when it is pulled all of the way up. You need to account for this by making the shade narrower. I would construct the blind so that the inner edge of the shade was at least 2-inches from the corner of the room. The window trim in the corner will show when the shades are lowered.

YA made four separate shades for her eight windows. Given the size of each double window, this was a good choice. It appears that she made each shade the exact width of the window trim. That leaves a small gap between the shades. This usually works well if there is enough wall between the windows. In this case, I think I would have constructed the shades so that they butted up against each other since there is very little wall between the windows.


Blue and White Bedroom Shade

PL made this beautiful bedroom shade. She wrote: "This is my second set of Roman shades and I used your instructions. Thanks for your wonderful web site. I must have watched the videos a dozen times. Your instructions are perfect."

This is an inside mount installation which showcases the beautiful window trim. This window has a wide sill that projects into the room. If PL had made an outside mount shade, she would have had it drop to the sill. I prefer an inside mount in this situation. You can just see a fabric cornice she placed at the top of the shade over the window.

PL continued: "I used wooden dowels in the fold lines, but next time, I am going to order your plastic battens". This photograph shows her shade turned inside out with the dowels placed in position and held down with magazines. It looks like she glued on her battens on top of her bed!