5 Reasons Solar Shades Are the Perfect Choice to Beat the Summer Heat
Every Alva window treatment is thoughtfully designed and crafted with your needs in mind. With so many options available, we know it can be hard to find a product that alligns your functional needs and interior preferences in a seamless way. This is where we step in to help you understand the details of your project. Custom solar shades are a modern solution for any home. They help block sunlight, reducing heat and glare, while still allowing for a gorgeous view whether it be a stunning mountain range, a beachfront sunscape or perhaps even the daily show of a bustling city.
Different level of Opacity? What?
If the space your preparing to design faces due east or west, or keeping the heat of the second story at bay is your task at hand — then solar shades are an excellent place to start your search. At Alva, we craft solar shades at different levels of transparencies, including 1%, 3%, 5% and 10%. The smaller percentages indicate less light will be allowed in, shielding more UV rays and creating a darker room. Higher percentages indicate a more open fabric, allowing in more of the light and a better view. It’s all about finding that perfect balance.
Improve Energy Efficiency
Uh, no brainer. Who doesn’t want to save on their utility bill?
Because high-end solar shades effectively minimize the heat & glare, they indirectly have an effect on your AC, helping use less energy during the hotter months of the year. This indirectly has an effect on your cooling systems and saves power used by them. These days energy efficiency has become a popular topic for homeowners. High-end technologies, like solar panels, and programmable thermostats have become quite the norm. People often forget that one of the most basic aspects of an energy-efficient home are its windows and quite frequently view window treatments as only a decoration and something way down the priority list. Interestingly, heat gain from a home’s windows accounts for 25%-40% of the average households cooling expenses.
In that same vein, let your custom window treatments do some of the heavy-lifting by cutting down on the sun streaming into your home, saving you more money on the utility bill.
Protect Your Furnishings
Although often overlooked, sun damage can threaten the quality of your furniture and is ultimately irreversible.
That expensive piece of artwork, the custom leather furniture that you just purchased and even the paint on your walls fade in the sun, which makes having a nice interior in your home somewhat difficult at times.
Our sunscreen fabrics filter and diffuse harsh UV rays and reduce energy consumption. Lighter color fabrics are more energy-efficient than darker ones, but they may also cause more glare and reflection. Darker fabrics absorb more heat into your home’s interior, but reduce glare and reflection, enhancing your view.
Rooms That Accommodate Solar Shades The Most
Soften the light with custom solar shades to accommodate that view. Where privacy isn’t an issue - like the kitchen, family room, or a commercial space. Fabric roman shades can be the perfect option for many rooms.
Here are some of our favorites:
Kitchen: It's important to have that lighting while you’re putting together the prosciutto platter for your guests. Whether you have a spacious kitchen with plenty of lighting options or your kitchen is too dark, we want you to feel the perfect shade of natural night.
Playroom: Louis Kahn a famous interior designer once said, “A room is not a room without natural light”. She was surely right, you can’t have a playroom without the room and you can’t have a room without the natural light. On a side note, all of our custom roman shades are made to be child-friendly according to the latest safety standards.
Office Spaces: Let's modernize the workplace. Make your patient rooms more therapeutic by using custom solar shades and window treatments. Not to mention, the natural light exposure which studies have shown to elevate the quality of life.
Custom solar shades are just a small portion of what Alva has available today that’ll help modernize your home or your workplace. We have so much more available and even more to share with you. We love talking to our customers so call or send us a note if you have any questions or want to know more about window treatments.
