Solar Shades

Fortville Solar Shades From Fortville Window Treatments

Built for west light off Geist Reservoir

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Quick Answer

Here's what to know before specifying this for your house. Room conditions, mount type and lift system all change the outcome, and the answers below explain how each one moves the decision.

  • Service: Solar Shades for Fortville homeowners
  • Service area: Fortville, IN and surrounding areas
    • Two different timelines apply. New custom product takes weeks because it has to be made. Repairs to what's already hanging, a cord lock, a ladder string, a chain that jumped the clutch, are usually far quicker.
  • Insured and bonded
  • Serving Fortville, IN since 2008
Solar Shades Services

Expert Solar Shades for Fortville Homes

Fortville has one exposure that beats every other window problem in Hancock County, and it's on the west edge of town. The Geist facing plats, Reserve at Geist through Geist Bay Estates, were built to look west and north west across open water on streets named Lighthouse Drive, Beacon Point Lane and Breakers Lane. That's direct afternoon sun plus the same sun again off the surface of the reservoir, arriving between four and seven in the evening when the room is actually in use. Solar screen fabric is the product built for it. It cuts glare and solar gain while leaving the view that the house was designed around, which a blind or a drape simply cannot do.

Openness factor is where the honesty has to happen, because it's a trade rather than a feature. A 10% openness fabric keeps a crisp view and lets more heat and glare through. A 1% fabric cuts glare hard and turns the view soft and gray. Whatever you choose, the geometry reverses after dark: when the room is lit and the outside is not, people can see in. That's the disclosure most homeowners on Cove Point and Sandy Point Lane wish they'd had first. Solar fabric also slows fading rather than stopping it, since NFRC attributes 40 to 60 percent of fading damage to UV and the rest keeps arriving.

When to Call

Signs You Need Solar Shades

If you notice any of these in your Fortville home, it is worth booking a measure. None of it is urgent, and none of it fixes itself either.

The room heats up long before the thermostat notices

A south room is only usable before lunch

Sheer curtains do nothing about direct sun

Furniture gets moved around to dodge the sun

Hardwood in front of south glass has lightened

Art on one wall has started going pale

A west room is unusable from three o'clock on

You keep closing blinds and losing the view

A monitor behind you catches sun every afternoon

You squint through a video call at two o'clock

Our Process

How Fortville Window Treatments Handles Solar Shades

Every job follows the same five-step process. Transparent, thorough, and done right the first time.

1

Three widths and three heights

2

Diagonal check for square

3

Shades hung and squared

4

Mounting depth read at the top

5

Roll direction and control side set

Real Project Photos

Solar Shades in Fortville

Photographs from real solar shades jobs completed by our crew in Fortville and surrounding areas.

Custom shades measured and installed in Fortville
Scope of Work

What Solar Shades Includes

Every Fortville job is documented item by item. Here is what the crew covers.

Every elevation walked and written down, because a west window and a north window don't get the same openness

Openness factor chosen per opening, 1, 3, 5 or 10 percent, rather than picked once for a whole house

Samples held against the actual glare at the hour that room is actually a problem

Fabric color decided alongside openness, since dark yarns read the view and light yarns bounce more light back at you

The view you'd be giving up shown to you through a real sample before the order, not described in words

Night behavior explained plainly, because with interior lights on the shade works in the other direction

Heat expectations set honestly, including what an interior product can't do once sun is already through the glass

Fade language kept accurate, since NFRC puts UV at roughly 40 to 60 percent of fading damage

Three widths and three heights per opening plus a corner-to-corner square check

Mounting depth measured for the tube, the brackets and a cassette if the roll is being hidden

Roll direction set, with reverse roll used where the fabric needs to stand off the glass

Light gap per side disclosed, and flagged as larger on shades over 120 inches or past a 4:1 ratio

Wide sun-facing spans reviewed for coupling so two tubes track together across one opening

Chain side chosen per window, with cordless and motorized offered where a chain doesn't suit

Every continuous cord loop unit gets its tensioner anchored rather than left hanging as a loop

Layering discussed where one fabric can't handle daytime glare and nighttime privacy at the same window

Hembar matched to the fabric so an open weave hangs straight instead of waving at the bottom

Each shade run full travel on install day and checked for centered tracking before sign-off

Pricing

What Solar Shades Cost in Fortville

National category figures put stock shades near $60 to $600 a window and custom-fabricated shades roughly $250 to $2,600. Those are published national ranges rather than a quote for a house in Fortville. Solar shades sit in the middle of that band and the openness number itself barely moves the price. What moves it is the weave and the yarn: a basic vinyl-coated polyester screen costs less than a fine-yarn or a metalized-backed fabric, and width drives everything as usual. Hiding the roll in a cassette adds. Motorization is priced separately, nationally $300 to $1,500 per window installed. Fortville Window Treatments works from measured openings and real elevations in Hancock County, never from an average.

By Product

How Solar Shades Differ by Product

Every product in this trade behaves differently in a room. Here is what that means for this work.

1 percent openness: The tightest weave we normally hang. It cuts the most glare and gives up the most view, so the outside reads as a soft haze rather than a scene. Specify it on hard west glass where the afternoon is genuinely unusable.

3 percent openness: Strong glare control with some view left. It's the choice for a home office facing west or south where screens have to be readable through the afternoon, and it's the one people are usually happiest with on the worst window in the house.

5 percent openness: The everyday middle. It keeps a usable view of a yard or a street while taking the hard edge off direct sun. This is the default we start from on most openings before a specific elevation argues us up or down.

10 percent openness: The most open weave, which means the best view out and the least glare control. It suits a north or east window where you want the fabric mostly for daytime privacy and some sun softening rather than for fighting an afternoon.

Dark fabric colors: Charcoal and bronze absorb light rather than scattering it, so the weave holes read as small clear windows and the view through is noticeably better. The tradeoff is that a dark fabric holds more heat at the glass line.

Light fabric colors: White and beige reflect more solar energy back out and keep the fabric cooler, but they scatter light across the weave, which washes out the view and can produce its own soft glare. It's a real choice, not a color preference.

Reverse roll on solar fabric: Rolling the fabric off the front of the tube stands the screen off the glass by an inch or so, which keeps it clear of hardware and lets a little air move in the space behind it. Useful on hot southern exposures.

Cassette headbox: A closed box hiding the tube, which matters more on solar than on other fabrics because an open roll of screen fabric looks like exactly what it is. It also keeps dust out of the weave sitting on top of the roll.

Motorized with a sun sensor: A motor plus a sensor that lowers the shade when the sun actually hits that elevation, or an astronomical timer that runs to sunrise and sunset. It's the version of this product that works when you aren't home to run it.

Layered with a room darkening shade: A second tube on a dual bracket carrying an opaque fabric behind or in front of the screen. The solar shade handles the afternoon, the second shade handles the night, and neither one gets asked to do a job it can't.

Light Control

See What Each Fabric Does To The Light

Pick a fabric below and the window updates. It's a drawing rather than a photograph, so read it as a rough guide to what each family does in a Fortville room, and to what it doesn't do.

Fabric type

Sheer, 10 percent openness

Ten percent of the weave is open, so you keep the view and most of the daylight. Glare drops a little. After dark, once your lamps are on, someone outside can read shapes through it, which is why this belongs on a view window rather than a bedroom.

Openness factor is printed on the fabric card, so you can compare one line against another before you order anything.

Keeps the viewNot private after dark

Solar, 5 percent openness

The usual pick for a west window or a covered porch. You can still read the yard through it, glare comes down noticeably, and the fabric intercepts a good share of the sun before it reaches you at four in the afternoon.

It also cuts the UV landing on floors and furniture. NFRC puts UV at roughly 40 to 60 percent of fading damage, so this slows fading rather than stopping it.

View and glare controlSlows fading

Solar, 3 percent openness

A tighter weave. The room goes dimmer and the view drops back to an outline. Choose it where the sun is the problem and the view is second, which around here usually means a west wall in July. That's a common call on this side of Indianapolis.

Openness affects how much you see out, not how private you are. A 3 percent fabric still shows silhouettes at night.

View becomes an outlineStrong glare control

Solar, 1 percent openness

Close to a solid fabric with a little view left in it. This is the strongest glare control in the solar family.

The trade is that it darkens the room on a gray January day too. Indianapolis averages a January high near 36F and the light is flat, so think about how the room reads in both seasons before you commit.

Darkest solar optionDim on gray days

Light filtering

No view through it. Daylight comes through the face diffused, so the room stays bright without a hot spot across the television or the kitchen island. This is the default for living spaces.

It isn't private in reverse at night. With the lamps on and the sun down, silhouettes still show.

No view through itBright without the glare

Room darkening

A denser fabric, usually with a liner behind it. Most of the light coming through the face is gone.

Light still arrives around the edges on an inside mount, so a room darkening shade gives you a dim room rather than a dark one. If someone in the house sleeps during the day, say so at the measure and we'll scope it differently.

Dim, not darkEdges stay bright

Blackout

The fabric itself passes essentially no light. What you'll still see is the perimeter. Lutron publishes an inside-mount light gap of about 3/4 inch per side on its Roller 20 and 64 shades, along with a standard factory deduction of 1/16 inch per side, and shades over 120 inches tall or past a 4:1 height-to-width ratio get larger gaps than that.

So if you need a genuinely dark bedroom, that gap has to be dealt with on purpose, either with side channels or by going outside mount. We tell you which one your opening can carry while we're still standing in the room.

Dark facePerimeter needs a plan

Openness factor is a measured fabric spec, so you can compare it line to line. The category names are not measured. One maker's room darkening can behave like another maker's light filtering, which is why the sample books come to the measure and get opened in the room they're going in, at the hour that room has the problem.

Common Questions

Solar Shades FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Fortville homeowners considering solar shades.

For that exposure we usually land at 3%, sometimes 1%. The Geist facing pocket averages around $636,000 in value with listings reported to $1.9 million, and the whole reason those houses cost what they do is the water view, so the instinct is to go as open as possible. But 10% against reflected late sun leaves you squinting at your own television. 5% is a reasonable compromise on a north west wall. On true west glass at Breakers Lane we'd rather you accept a slightly softer view at 3% and actually use the room in the evening than keep a perfect view you close the shade against anyway.
Yes, and it's the thing Fortville homeowners most often learn the hard way. A solar screen works by contrast: during the day the outside is brighter than the room, so you see out and nobody sees in. After dark that flips, and a lit room behind a 5% or 10% fabric is visible from outside. On a street where the houses sit close, like the town lots in the 1849 plat, that matters immediately. The usual answer is a second layer: a solar shade for daytime glare with drapery or a room darkening roller behind it for the evening. We'd rather build that in than have you discover it in week two.
They reduce solar gain reaching the room, which is a real effect, and they do it best on the glass taking the worst load. Fortville sits in IECC Climate Zone 5A with a July average high of 85.2 degrees and a muggy season running from about May 25 to September 22, so afternoon gain has months to work on you. A tighter openness factor and a lighter facing color both reflect more energy back out. What a solar shade will not do is act like an insulator in January, when the average low here is 20.9 degrees. For winter, cellular is the product with published testing.
They do opposite jobs and most people want both. A dark facing absorbs rather than scatters, so you get the sharpest view through it and the least glare bounce inside the room. A light facing reflects more solar energy back out through the glass and keeps the room cooler, but it scatters light and can look bright and hazy from inside. A dual sided fabric, dark toward the room and light toward the outside, is the usual resolution and it's what we specify most often on the west elevations in the Geist facing plats. From the street the whole run reads uniform, which those associations tend to care about.
Usually, and the constraints are width and reach. Houses in that band carry 24 to 40 openings apiece and no two are alike, with arched and palladian units and door walls at widths past standard product sizes. A very wide single shade deflects at the tube and can telescope, so we often split the run and align the joints with the existing wall structure. Reaching a shade twenty feet up means motorization, which brings its own cost: Hunter Douglas states PowerView battery life is about one year, and up there a battery change is a ladder job. Hardwired power is worth discussing while the wall is still open.
It slows the damage, which is the honest word. NFRC attributes 40 to 60 percent of fading to UV, and a solar screen with a tight openness factor cuts a large share of that. The remainder comes from visible light and heat, and no shade removes those without removing the view. On the west facing rooms above Geist, where afternoon sun arrives direct and again off the water, we've seen floors and rugs go noticeably lighter in a few seasons. A 1% or 3% fabric plus a habit of closing it on the worst afternoons does more than any single product claim will.
It's the percentage of the fabric that's open space between the yarns. A 5 percent fabric is 95 percent solid and 5 percent holes. That single number sets the whole tradeoff you're buying, because the holes are what let you see out and the solid part is what cuts the glare. Lower openness means more glare control and less view. Higher openness means more view and less glare control. There's no fabric that gives you both, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling rather than measuring.
Usually lower than people expect. A west elevation in Fortville takes direct low sun through the worst part of a summer afternoon, and a 10 percent fabric there will not cut it. We'd normally be at 3 percent, sometimes 1 percent if the room is a home office where screens have to stay readable. Understand what that costs you: at 3 percent the view out is real but muted, and at 1 percent the outside becomes a soft haze rather than a scene.
Darker, by a clear margin, and it surprises people. A charcoal or bronze yarn absorbs light instead of scattering it, so each opening in the weave behaves like a small clear window and the view through stays crisp. A white or beige fabric scatters light across the weave and washes the view out, sometimes producing a soft glare of its own. The counterweight is heat: a light fabric reflects more solar energy back out through the glass, while a dark fabric holds more at the window.
Yes, and this is the disclosure that saves arguments later. A solar shade works by having more light on one side than the other. During the day it's brighter outside, so you see out and nobody sees in. After dark with your lamps on, that reverses exactly: you see your own reflection and somebody on the sidewalk sees into the room. It's physics, not a fabric flaw. If a room needs nighttime privacy, you need a second fabric on a dual bracket.
They help at the window and they do far less than the marketing suggests. Here's the honest mechanism: by the time an interior shade is doing anything, the sun's energy has already come through the glass and turned into heat inside the room. A screen fabric absorbs and re-radiates some of that, and a light-colored fabric reflects a share back out, so you feel a real difference standing near that window. An exterior product intercepts sun before it gets in, which is a fundamentally better position. That's the difference.
It slows it. NFRC attributes roughly 40 to 60 percent of fading damage to ultraviolet light, with the rest coming from visible light and heat, so no interior fabric ends the problem. Solar screens block a substantial share of UV and cut visible light too, so a hardwood floor or a leather chair in front of south glass ages noticeably slower behind one. What we won't tell you is that a solar shade protects anything completely, because it doesn't, and the fabric only works while it's down.
Reasonably, and it depends on the openness. At 1 or 3 percent, someone standing outside in daylight sees a screen rather than a room, and that's genuine daytime privacy. At 10 percent, a person close to the glass can make out shapes and movement inside. So openness is doing double duty here: it's your glare setting and your daytime privacy setting at once. What it never provides is privacy after dark once the lights are on inside.
Because you'd be paying for a view you then throw away. The whole reason to buy a solar shade instead of a room darkening roller is that you want to keep looking outside while the glare goes away. At 1 percent the outside is a haze, which is right on a brutal west window and wrong on a north window where there was never much glare to fight. Buying openness room by room is how this product earns its price, and it's why we walk elevations before quoting.
Mechanically nothing. A solar shade is a roller shade, same tube, same brackets, same clutch or motor. The difference is entirely the fabric: an open-weave screen designed around a published openness percentage instead of a fabric designed around opacity and appearance. So the decision tree is different. On a roller you're choosing how much light to block. On a solar shade you're choosing how much view to keep while cutting glare, which is a genuinely different question.
They do, and a slider is often the best case for one, since patio glass throws afternoon light across an entire room and you don't want to lose the view of the yard. The things to plan are width and clearance. A wide opening may want two coupled tubes running on one line so they track together, and the hembar has to clear the door handle and the track at the bottom. Reverse roll helps where the fabric would otherwise foul hardware in the opening.
Usually, and the fix is about angle as much as fabric. Screen glare comes from a bright source reflecting off the display, so what matters is cutting the intensity of the light behind and beside you. A 3 percent fabric on the offending window normally does it, and 1 percent handles the worst west exposures. Where it doesn't work is when the sun is low enough to come in under the hembar, which is why we sometimes extend an outside mount lower rather than going tighter on the weave.
Yes, on a dual bracket, and it's the honest answer rather than a way to sell two shades. One bracket carries two tubes at the same opening. The screen handles the afternoon while keeping your view, and an opaque fabric drops at night for real privacy or for sleeping. Trying to get both from a single fabric always disappoints in one direction. The pair needs mounting depth, so we measure for it at the start instead of adding a second shade later.
On a bank of sun-facing windows, it's the version that actually gets used. A sun sensor lowers the shade when that elevation takes sun rather than when you remember, and an astronomical timer runs to sunrise and sunset through the year. Installed motorization sits nationally at $300 to $1,500 per window. Budget for batteries as an ongoing item: Hunter Douglas states PowerView battery life is about one year, and that's the cost people are least often told about before they sign.
Better than most fabrics, since these are engineered for exactly that. Vinyl-coated polyester screens are the workhorse and they hold color and tension for years on a hard exposure. What ages first is usually the edge that sits exposed on the outside of the roll rather than the body of the fabric, and very fine yarn fabrics are less forgiving than coarser ones. Keeping the shade down through the hottest hours protects the room, which is the whole point of owning it.
Areas We Serve

Solar Shades Across Fortville

We measure and install in every one of these Fortville neighborhoods. Each has its own page with the build eras, window conditions and mounting notes for that section.

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Office
1417 Commerce Avenue, Indianapolis, IN 46201
Hours
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Service Area
Fortville, IN and Surrounding Areas

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