Shades & Drapery

Manual shades are fine on a window you reach once a day and never think about again. The kitchen above the sink. A bathroom. The mudroom. The minute the window is over six feet tall, behind a piece of furniture, on a sloped ceiling, or on a circuit you want to behave at the same time as the lights and the AV, manual stops being the answer. Motorized shades are not a luxury upgrade. They are the point at which the shade actually gets used. The shade in a drawer is the most common reason a homeowner says they hate their window treatments. The right shade is the one that runs on the same scene as the lights and the climate, without anyone having to remember to pull a chain.

A roller shade rolls up onto a tube. The fabric is flat. The look is clean and modern. Roller is the workhorse for most contemporary and transitional homes. A Roman shade folds. The fabric stacks in horizontal pleats as the shade lifts. The look is softer, more traditional, more textured. Romans use heavier fabrics, decorative trims, and patterns that show because the fabric is flat in the down position and pleated in the up position. Both can be motorized. Both are made to order. The choice is design-driven, not technical. Your designer will steer you. We make either of them work mechanically and on the control system.

On a luxury room, almost always both. The shade controls the light. The drapery controls the room. Drapery softens acoustics, frames the window, gives the room weight at the edges, and reads as finished in a way that a bare shade never will. The shade does the daily work. The drapery does the design work. They are not competing scopes. They are two halves of the same answer. We coordinate the hardware so the drapery rod and the shade pocket live together cleanly, and we put both on the same control system so they behave like one thought.

Sheer if the room is for living in the daytime and you want to keep the view and the natural light. Blackout if the room is for sleeping or for watching a screen. Most primary suites and most great rooms want both, on the same window, in a dual-roller configuration. The sheer for the day. The blackout for the night and for the cinema scene. If you are picking one, ask yourself what the room is doing at the worst moment of the day. The shade has to handle that one. Daylight glare on a TV at four in the afternoon. Headlights through the bedroom window at two in the morning. The shade is for the worst case, not the average case.

Openness factor is the percentage of the woven fabric that is open weave instead of solid fiber. The lower the number, the tighter the weave, the more privacy and glare control you get and the less you see through it. The higher the number, the more open the weave, the more view and the less privacy. One percent is for projection rooms and tight glare control. Three percent is the most common choice for living rooms and bedrooms. Five percent is for view-forward rooms with some glare concern. Ten percent is for waterfront or mountain views with no neighbors close in. The right answer is decided in your room, in your light, with the actual fabric in your hand. Never from a phone screen.

Because the book lies. Not on purpose. The book is honest about what the fabric looks like in the showroom. The showroom is not your house. Shade fabric reads completely differently depending on the direction of light coming through it. North light is cool and flat. South light is warm and bright. East light is yellow in the morning. West light is red and orange at the end of the day. The same fabric can read warm taupe in your kitchen at ten in the morning and cold gray in your primary suite at four in the afternoon. The wall color bounces into the shade. The floor bounces into the shade. The trim bounces into the shade. We tape the actual fabric sample to the actual window in the actual room and we look at it in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night, before anyone places an order. That is the only way to know what the shade is actually going to look like once it is hanging there for the next twenty years. The five-minute step at the front of the project saves the conversation about why the shade looks wrong, six months later, when nothing can be done about it.

Because matching the perceived color sometimes means changing the actual color. A house has different rooms facing different directions, painted different colors, with different floors and different trim and different amounts of glass. The same exact fabric on every window will not read as the same color across the house. The kitchen will go warm. The primary suite will go cool. The library with the dark wood will swallow the fabric. To make a whole house read consistent, we sometimes specify two or three closely related fabrics, one warmer and one cooler, so the perceived color matches even though the actual SKU is different. The homeowner is not supposed to notice. The homeowner is supposed to walk through the house and feel that everything goes together. That is what the room sample step is for. We catch the rooms that need a different fabric before we order anything, not after.

On a patio, deck, or covered loggia that you actually want to use, yes. The shade buys you usable months. It holds heat in during the cool months. It holds cooled air in when the AC bleeds out through the open side of an outdoor kitchen. It cuts surface temperature on stone and tile by enough to keep the room from cooking. It keeps biting insects out. It gives privacy on a deck that faces a neighbor or a road. The shade also protects the outdoor furniture, the rug, and the soft goods from UV and weather, which adds years to scope you have already paid for. The category is growing for a reason. We are seeing more outdoor shade scopes every year because the rooms they go on are getting more expensive to build, and a five thousand dollar shade scope protects a hundred thousand dollar room.

If the shade is fabricated and installed correctly, yes. Mosquitoes, no-see-ums, gnats, pollen, dust, and most of what is on the wind get held back by an outdoor mesh shade with proper retention in the side tracks. The Screen Innovations Kaos system uses a patented retention mechanism that keeps the fabric in the track even in real wind, which is the failure point on most cheaper outdoor shades. A shade that pops out of the track in a breeze is a shade that fails as a bug screen. The ones we install do not.

Most outdoor shades, no. They are not high-wind rated and they have to come up the moment the weather turns, which is usually the moment you wanted them down. The shade we default to for outdoor is Screen Innovations Kaos, and Kaos is high-wind rated. The fabric stays in the track in real wind. You can ride the storm out with the shade down protecting the patio instead of running outside in a gust to wind it up. Pair it with a wind sensor and the shade lifts itself before the gust hits the threshold without anyone having to do anything. That is the system we recommend.

Good outdoor shades use solution-dyed acrylic or PVC-coated polyester fabrics rated for outdoor exposure, with hardware powder-coated to handle salt air, freeze cycles, and direct sun. With the brands we install, you should plan on a fabric that holds color and integrity for ten to fifteen years in a hard-weather location, longer in shaded or sheltered installs. The motors and electronics are warrantied separately and we keep records of what is in your home so when something does eventually need attention, we know exactly what is on the wall before the truck rolls. The cheap version of an outdoor shade looks acceptable on day one and looks terrible on year three. We do not install those.

Three things. First, wind. Kaos is high-wind rated. The patented retention system keeps the fabric in the track when the weather turns. Most outdoor shades have to come up the moment a gust hits, which is the moment you wanted them down. Second, scale and look. Kaos goes up to twenty-four feet wide and comes in nine standard powder-coat finishes that can be matched to a custom color. The cassette is square and clean. It belongs on a high-end home. Third, integration. Kaos talks to the same control system that runs the rest of your house. The cheap outdoor shade lives on a separate remote that ends up lost in a kitchen drawer. We will tell you the truth about which projects do not need a Kaos. On the projects that do, we lead with it for a reason.

Because drapery either reads as part of the room or as something hung on the wall, and the difference is in the workmanship. Hand-tacked pleats. Weighted hems. Lining selected for the right body and the right blackout. Pattern matched at the seams. Roman shades fabricated on a true grid so the folds land where the drawing said they would. None of that comes out of a catalog. It comes out of a workroom. The workroom is the difference between a window that looks expensive and a window that looks correct. Big-box installers buy from a catalog. We work with workrooms.

Most of the time, yes. If you have an existing drapery panel or a swatch, the workroom can pull a matching or coordinating fabric from one of the major mills, or special order from a fabric house if the original was a designer line. If the fabric was discontinued and we cannot match it cleanly, we will tell you that and give you the closest options. We will not take the order, hope it works, and surprise you at the install. We tell you what we know and what we do not know before the workroom cuts a yard of anything.

Yes. Outdoor drapery is a real and growing category. The fabrics are different. Solution-dyed outdoor fabrics that handle UV, rain, and the freeze cycle. The hardware is different. Stainless or marine-grade powder-coat rods, weighted hems that handle wind, and motorization rated for outdoor use. The look is the same. A loggia or covered patio with proper outdoor drapery reads like a room instead of a porch. We coordinate it the same way as indoor drapery. The workroom builds it. We motorize it. We integrate it into the same control system the rest of the outdoor scope is on.

It means the workroom does not sell directly to the public. They work through designers, architects, and integrators. You cannot phone them up and order from a website. The reason that matters is the workrooms that survive in that channel survive on the quality of their work. The retail-facing workrooms compete on price and have to cut corners somewhere. The to-the-trade workrooms compete on craft. As a homeowner, you get access to that craft because we have the trade relationship. The fabric is hand-selected. The fabrication is done by people who have built ten thousand of them. The install is done by people who do this every day. That is the difference, and the math on a luxury room makes it the right answer almost every time.

Hardwired wherever the building gives us the chance. Hardwired motors are quieter, faster, never need a battery change, and behave the same on the first day and the thousandth day. Battery motors are the right answer for retrofits where opening the wall is not realistic, and for second-position movements on a window that does not justify a wire. We use both. The choice is project-driven. We will not push hardwired into a finished house where the cost of opening the wall buys nothing. We will not push battery into a primary suite where the homeowner is going to hear that motor every morning for the next twenty years. We tell you what we would do in your house. Then we do that.

On the brands we install, the motors are rated for twenty thousand to thirty thousand cycles, which is twenty to thirty years on a typical residential shade that goes up and down once or twice a day. Hardwired motors generally outlast battery motors because they do not deal with the heat cycle of charging. The motor is not usually what fails. The fabric or the cord is usually what fails first. Both are repairable without replacing the motor. We keep records of every motor in your house. When one does eventually need attention, we know what it is, what brand, what year, and we order the right part the first time.

On the systems we install, yes. The shades go on the same control fabric as the lights and the AV. Crestron is our primary platform. Lutron is supported and has its own deep shade ecosystem we work with. Apple Home, Alexa, and Google all integrate as voice and app overlays on top of the main control system, not as the primary brain. The reason that distinction matters is that voice assistants change every few years and the shade has to keep working when they do. We build on the durable layer. We expose the conveniences on top. The shade behaves correctly whether your phone is in your hand or not.

On a properly designed system, no. The shade and the controller communicate on the local control bus, not over the internet. The internet only matters for remote access and voice assistants. If the Wi-Fi is down, the keypad still works. The schedule still works. The astronomical-time scheduler still works. The local Crestron or Lutron processor still talks to the motor. You lose remote-from-the-airport control until the Wi-Fi comes back. You do not lose the shade. We design for the day the network is down on purpose, because that day is going to come.

Custom shades and drapery are made to order. After we measure and the fabric is selected, fabrication is typically four to eight weeks depending on the fabric mill and the workroom queue. Outdoor shade frames and motors run a similar window. Special-order designer fabrics or imported textiles can stretch to twelve weeks or more. We tell you the dates we have at the moment we have them. We do not pad the schedule and we do not promise a date that the fabric mill has not actually committed to. If the workroom is twelve weeks out for a specific fabric, we tell you that the day we know it, and we offer the alternatives. The honest schedule is the only schedule worth having.

Most of the time, yes. Battery motors, surface-mounted hardware, and careful trim work let us add motorized shades and drapery into a finished home without a renovation. We measure the way a workroom measures, not the way a big-box installer measures. We coordinate with the painter, the carpenter, and the millworker if any of them need to be involved. The finished installation should look like it was designed in from the start, not bolted on after. If we cannot achieve that level of finish on a specific window, we tell you that before we take the order, and we offer the alternatives. We do not deliver a compromise we did not warn you about.

Yes. We work with the designer's existing workroom whenever there is a relationship in place. Our job in that case is to handle the motorization, the controls, the integration into the rest of the house, and the coordination on site. The workroom does what the workroom does. We do what we do. Both pieces show up at the same install date, on the same site, on the same plan. That is the value of an integrator who plays well with the existing trades. We do not require the designer to drop their relationships to work with us. We never have.

On a new build, get us in front of the architect and the GC before the rough framing closes. The cost of installing a motorized shade in a planned pocket is a fraction of the cost of retrofitting one into a finished ceiling, and the result looks better. Run the wires while the wall is open. Build the pocket. Plan the drapery rod into the millwork. The hard cost on day one is real. The cost of doing it later is almost always higher. On a retrofit, plan for the right approach to the rooms that matter most first. Primary suite. Great room. Media room. The rooms that are used every day. We do not have to do every window in the first phase. We can phase the work and keep the system designed so the next phase plugs in cleanly.

For most roller shade fabrics, vacuum with a brush attachment on low suction, or a soft microfiber cloth for spot cleaning. Solar screen and outdoor fabrics handle a damp cloth and a mild soap. Drapery fabric depends on the fabric. Linen, silk, velvet, and outdoor fabrics each have their own routine. We hand the homeowner a written care card at the install with the specific guidance for the fabrics in your house, and we tell you what to never do, which is usually any kind of harsh cleaner or a wet mop near the bottom rail. Once a year or so on a high-end installation, we recommend a professional drapery cleaning by a service that comes to the house. We can recommend the right one.

You call us. We come back. People buy Restrepo sites, not the manufacturers inside of them, and that means the warranty on the experience is ours regardless of which motor or which fabric is involved. We keep the records. We know what is on the wall, what year it went up, what the parts are, and who fabricated it. If the part is under manufacturer warranty we handle that. If it is out of warranty we tell you what the repair costs and we do the work. We do not disappear after the install. The system is going to last decades. We are still going to be here.

Sometimes. If you bought a luxury home that came with a motorized shade scope from another integrator and you want a real partner going forward, talk to us. We will assess what is in the house, tell you the truth about whether it is worth servicing or whether you would be better off replacing the worst of it, and we will quote both paths. We will not pretend a system is fine when it is not, and we will not push a full replacement when a service plan is the right answer. The deciding question is what is going to make the house behave the way you want it to behave for the next ten years. That is the answer we work toward, regardless of who put the system in.