Automated shades are more popular than ever. All window coverings enhance your home’s ambiance, control natural light and provide privacy. Here are the top five reasons to add motorized shades and two brands that we love. If you’ve been considering automated window coverings, but don’t know where to begin, keep reading.
Top Five Reasons for the Popularity of Automated Shades
1. Convenience:
Shade control works especially well for hard-to-reach windows that cannot be easily accessed. Controlling the amount of natural light in your rooms from a keypad, or smart phone or tablet is easier and faster than manually lowering a shade with a cord. Stay in bed and raise the shades! Entertain guests in your home and don’t stop to draw the curtains – they close automatically at pre-set times.
2. Safety & Privacy:
Safety and privacy are two reasons for adding automated shades in your home. Create pre-set times for window coverings to open and shut depending on the time of day, time of year and occupancy of the home. And these can be changed easily or override the pre-set from your smart phone or tablet.
3. Aesthetics & Glare Control:
Motorized shades offer the benefit of targeted glare control in rooms where you watch TV, stream video or have a home theater. The choices for beautiful window coverings that match your decor and reflect your fine taste have never been better. Most brands offer a variety of colors, textures and opacity (light filtering quality). We are dealers for Qmotion and Lutron Sivoia SQ Shades (more on them below).
4. UV Protection & Furnishings Preservation:
Homeowners make a significant investment in their interior furnishings and have a vested interest in protecting them. The sun’s ultraviolet rays are harmful to fine rugs, artwork and furniture.
5. Energy Savings
Controlling natural light can reduce energy consumption. Lowering shades in the summer blocks the hot sun from heating a room while in the winter, keeping shades open can capture natural solar heat, reducing the energy load.
Qmotion & Lutron Homeworks QS
Motorized shades can be operated a number of different ways. They can be wireless – typically battery operated – and controlled through a remote control device or smart phone. Qmotion offers a wonderful line of battery operated roller shades. They have Qsync and QRelay to use with iOS or Android phones and home routers. We like their roller shades!
The alternative is a wired shade that is automated and integrated with a third party platform such as Control4, Crestron or Savant. We like the Sivoia QS system that uses the Lutron “brain” to operate the shades. The Lutron system’s “brain” (Homeworks) has an astronomical clock that allows for programming pre-set times for opening and closing based on the time of day and time of year. Our experience shows that wired systems are reliable and worth the investment.
However, we have spaces in our homes that are used for specific purposes and different solutions might work best in such spaces. For instance, the garage might be the perfect place to use a battery-operated Qmotion shade while the bedrooms might necessitate a more sophisticated scheduling ability, so Sivoia would work best for those spaces.
Want more information? Set up an appointment to visit the Audio Video Design interactive Home Technology Design Center in Westwood and experience automated shade tech for yourself.