Understanding Blackout Shades and Window Treatments
A sheer fabric was fused to a blackout liner on these top down bottom up roman shades in Pacific Palisades. The dual-drapery had a sheer front panel and an operable, blackout rear panel.
One of the most common requests we get for residential window treatments in Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Orange County is for “blackout” shades in bedrooms. Below we take a look at what blackout actually means when it comes to window shades, the difference between “room darkening” and “blackout,” and how to achieve true darkness in a bedroom if that is your goal.
What are Blackout Window Treatments?
Blackout window treatments are any treatment that uses a fabric or material that allows for ZERO light transmission ie no matter how bring the light on one side, it will not penetrate through the fabric to the other side. This can be achieved with soft fabrics and more plastic-like screens, though both are synthetic.
Over the past decade or so, there have been some pretty serious advancements in blackout window treatment materials, especially when it comes to liners attached to fabrics or other window treatments made from more natural materials, for example woven wood roman shades. Today’s liners (the high quality ones anyway) are soft to the touch and generally move pretty freely, making them great for backing things like draperies and roman shades. Cheap blackout window treatments on the other hand are often still rigid and not-so-soft to the touch. As a general word of caution, be wary when buying something (cheap) online that is marketed as “blackout.” We regularly go to clients’ houses and remove products they purchased with one expectation, that it blocks light, and once installed they find it does no such thing.
A simple test we like to do to demonstrate to clients whether or not a fabric or material is truly blackout is to hold an iPhone camera directly onto a piece of fabric - blackout material will let absolutely no light through.
Understanding Light Gaps when it comes to Blackout Shades
Light gaps are the area around a shade where light sneaks through. This can be around the sides of a shade on an inside mounted window treatment, above the shade on something like a roller shade with no valance or top treatment, or even the space between the shade and the wall on an outside mounted window treatment.
No matter how impenetrable your shade material is, if you have light gaps, you will not have a blackout situation.
Room darkening vs. Blackout
The recommended term for blackout window treatments within the industry is “room darkening.” This is mainly due to the effects of light gaps as discussed above and the expectation vs. reality of consumers when they purchase “blackout” window shades only to find the room they were hoping to darken is far from “blacked out.”
For us at Field Work Design Craft, we use this as an opportunity to educate our clients about what blackout really means, how the window treatment they think they would like may-or-may-not help achieve this, and what can be done if total darkness is their goal.
Is true “blackout” possible? Yes, it is. But it generally requires two window treatments on a single window, which can affect not only budget, but also function and aesthetic, too.
Options for Blackout window Treatments
Drapery: One of the best options for blackout window treatments is a drapery. As we discussed above, blackout liners for fabrics have improved substantially of late, making them better suited for lining high quality drapery fabrics than ever. They are soft, tend to move well, and can be sewn onto nearly any drapery face fabric to create a truly light-blocking curtain.
Our blackout fabric liner in white (available in other colors) has a soft, velvety hand (feel) and is very free-flowing. This liner allows ZERO light transmission.
Pros of blackout draperies: Draperies tend to be outside mounted, often if not usually enveloping the entire window or door they adorn. More coverage outside and around the window generally leads to reduced light leakage. With a variety of drapery rods and tracks, blackout draperies can be wall mounted or ceiling mounted, depending on the look and function you are trying to achieve. Nowadays it is also pretty easy to find single-ply blackout fabrics that have the blackout layer fused directly to some sort of face fabric. These tend to be a bit less expensive, if not quite as “nice” per se. That being said, we do have and offer some fabrics like this that are really quite nice!
How to achieve true blackout with a drapery: Consider pairing it with an roman shade that will block light sneaking through the top of a window, an inside mounted roller shade with a fascia or other top treatment, or even with a cornice board that will completely conceal the top of the drape.
Drapery watch-out! Custom drapes should always be made with overlaps and returns (where they pin back to the wall) which will reduce or eliminate light gaps at the end of the drape. Also to note, blackout draperies will generally have pinholes where stitching occurs, so just keep this in mind.
An example of inside mounted, blackout lined woven wood roman shades in a primary bedroom. The rest of the house got matching unlined roman shades. Being able to mix and match liners based on light and privacy needs is a big plus with custom roman shades.
Roman Shades: Like draperies, roman shades are an excellent window treatment choice for blackout or room darkening. Both fabric roman shades and woven wood roman shades can be made with a blackout liner. We’ve even made sheer roman shades with blackout liners as in the pic at the very top of this article. But keep in mind, adding a blackout liner to a roman shade, probably even more so than a drapery, will affect the way it functions and looks.
Inside mounted vs. outside mounted roman shades for room darkening: Outside mounted roman shades will block more light than inside mounted roman shades, which require a “deduction,” or the head rail to be cut down in order to fit within a window frame. On the other hand, outside mounted roman shades will mount directly to the wall or window molding, completely covering the window’s sides. Even with an outside mounted roman shade, light gaps will still exist as the shade will hang some distance from the wall. For this reason, we almost always build outside mounted roman shades, especially when going for blackout, with a “turned head rail,” creating less projection off the wall.
Roman shades + Drapery for true blackout: A blackout lined roman shade and a blackout lined drapery are one of the best ways to achieve true blackout (or pretty dang close). This is because roman shade head rails are built on a 1x1 or 1x2 and mount flush to the wall or within the window frame, eliminating light gaps coming from the top of the shade. Then when concealed by a drapery on the sides, nearly all light is eliminated.
Combining an drapery with a roman shade is an excellent way to increase blackout. Even in this case with a light-filtering roman shade, the head rail inside-mounted helps reduce light leaks toward the top of the drapery when closed.
Roller shades: Roller shades are also a good option for blackout window treatments, in large part due to the sheer number of options that blackout fabrics roller shades can be made from. As noted above, all blackout fabrics are made from synthetic materials, which lend themselves very well to roller shades.
Roller Shade Light Gaps: Roller shades have some of the most prominent light gaps of any window treatment. This has to do with how they are constructed and the mechanisms required to operate them. A clutch-operated roller shade with a beaded chain to raise and lower the shade requires the shade material to be cut down in order for that clutch to operate, therefore creating a larger light gap at the edge of the shade. You can read more about roller shades and what to be aware of here.
Also important to note with blackout roller shades, is unless you have some sort of top treatment, for example a fascia or perhaps a custom upholstered cornice box, the light gap at the top of the roller shade will be very large. Many of our clients like the minimalist and contemporary look of “open rolllers” but they do not lend themselves well to creating true blackout in a bedroom.
Taken during the day, the light gaps on these inside mounted “open roller” roller shades are very obvious, especially above the roller.
How to Achieve True Blackout with Roller Shades: Much like roman shades, roller shades can be covered with a blackout lined drapery for increased darkness. Without a top treatment, they do tend to block much less light than a roman shade, but depending on your needs, might work just fine. A roller shade and drapery combo (especially something like a ripple fold drapery) can have a very nice contemporary design aesthetic, too!
From highly stylized to basic and simple, roller shades offer arguably the most versatile selection of materials when looking to blackout a room. This is a tiny, tiny snippet of the options available.
Other window coverings to consider for blackout in a bedroom
Cellular shades are a decent, more cost-effective option for room darkening. They are fairly low profile and have some of the smallest light gaps, though should be paired with a secondary window treatment to achieve true blackout.
Shutters and blinds are simply not good for trying to blackout a room by themselves. There are too many individual pieces and moving parts and light gaps between individual slats. Though when paired with a drapery, or in the case of shutters, a second treatment INSIDE the shutter, you can create a fairly darkened room.