Imagine an intuitive window covering that looks as if it just belongs in your window. Floating shades that meet your light control and privacy needs. Sound too good to be true? Custom floating shades are here thanks to Hunter Douglas Pirouette Window Shades, a tailor-made option that will fit your windows perfectly.  

What Are They?

These floating shades are unlike any other choice on the market. You have horizontal vanes made of soft fabric like you might in fabric blinds. They’re backed, though, with a sheer material that helps to protect your privacy and control the light coming into the room. They come in a number of different color choices, ensuring you can select the right choice for any room in your home.

The Benefits

There are many reasons to consider Hunter Douglas Pirouette Window Shades. It begins with their versatility. You can decide how much light you want in a room. Choose from four or five-inch vanes, as well as semi-opaque or room-darkening fabric choices.

The UV protection is the other real benefit to this window covering option. It blocks up to 81% of the UV rays coming into your home during the day, even when they’re open, and that can help protect your flooring and your furniture.

One final benefit is the lack of bulk when they’re fully rolled up. With many window coverings, raising the shade of blinds means quite a bit of bulk at the top. With Hunter Douglas Pirouette Window Shades, though, the shades roll up into the headrail, so there’s no bulk at the top.

Interested in deciding whether this is the right choice for your home? Contact us today and schedule a free consultation with one of our window covering experts. We’ll help you decide whether this window covering is what you want or if another option is right for you!

As you shop for the right window treatments to meet your needs, you’re likely to come up with lots of different options. Understanding which is which and what might be right for you, though, can be a little complicated. Window treatments are really divided into three main categories.

Hard window treatments are those that are made of firm materials like wood and vinyl. If you’ve ever seen wood shutters or vinyl blinds, you’ve seen hard window treatments. Soft window treatments, though, are comprised of anything a bit softer. Sheer curtains and roman shades fit into this category. The third category is where you combine the two of those. It’s called layered window treatments, and you may see it when people use valances in combination with blinds.

Soft window treatments are becoming increasingly popular and for good reason. There’s quite a bit of versatility in this category that isn’t available in others, especially when you combine off-the-shelf choices with custom options like custom soft window shadings and custom curtains. How can you ensure you get what’s right for your windows, though, and what really makes the best custom soft window shadings and other soft treatments? This guide can help.

What’s Right for Your Windows?

If you’re just beginning to design your space or you’re in the midst of updating it, you may not be sure what to consider as far as window treatments go. The best place to start, then, is to think about the windows in your room. What do you want to do with the light there? Do you need light-blocking power, as you might in a bedroom or sleeping space? Do you love the light that comes in, but the windows themselves need an accent piece to help showcase their beauty? Running through questions like these in your mind can help you select the right type of window coverings.

Keep in mind that you don’t need the same window coverings throughout your home. You simply need to select a style for each room that works for the privacy and light needs in that given space.

Once you’ve worked through your mental checklist, it’s time to start shopping. Be sure you consider all of the options on the market (both soft and hard) to add to a space. You may even want to enlist the help of our window coverings expert in a free design consultation session. We can not only help you find the right soft window coverings for a space, but also help you decide whether to pair them with a hard window covering option, too.

The Best Soft Coverings Are . . .

When you know what might work in a given space, how do you decide what you should go with? Here’s where your design tastes come into play. While our experts can help you understand your options, only you can decide whether you want the relaxed feel of beautiful custom roman shades or the formality of custom-designed draperies. Think about the other pieces in the room and what might fit in with both the feel of the room and your other furniture.

Silhouette Window Shadings – A Unique Option

The many soft window treatment choices on the market today, one custom option you may want to consider is Silhouette Window Shadings by Hunter Douglas. Beautiful choices that allow you to better control light and privacy, these simple coverings help to protect your home and allow you to have some flexibility with regard to light control while fully maintaining your privacy.

Whether you decide soft window coverings are perfect for your home or you’re looking for something in the hard window treatment department, we can help. To learn more, contact us today at 480.643.0014.

 Shutters arrived on the scene even before glass windows did. In fact, 500 years ago, it was incredibly common for homes to have shutters. Made of solid wooden boards, they certainly didn’t look like the best window shutters you can buy today. They did, however, help cover the windows and provide some security. These days, shutters don’t necessarily provide security, but they do help cover your windows, and they offer some serious bonuses when you choose these window coverings over the other options on the market.

Benefits of Shutters

Wondering why you should choose shutters over the other window treatment options on the market today? There are a number of benefits, no matter what type of shutters you select. Take a look at a few:

• Better Light Control: No one wants the bright sun shining in at the most inopportune moments, and shutters offer much better light control than many other choices. More than that, though, is the fact that you decide how much light you want in your home. It’s flexibility redefined when it comes to deciding how much natural light you want in your home, and that’s not only a huge bonus for you, but it’s a benefit for your furniture and flooring, too, as it can help protect both from UV rays.
• Property Value: Shutters can actually increase the value of your home. Since they’re often custom-made for your windows, they tend to remain with the home when it’s sold, and that means they may even factor into the appraisal value of your home, something many other choices on the market don’t do.
• Energy Efficiency: Shutters can help change the energy efficiency of your home. They can block the heat from the sun’s rays or even the cold from the winter wind from coming into your home. For you, that translates into a much lower energy bill in the long run.

Types of Shutters You May Want to Consider

Maybe you’re ready for shutters, but now you have to choose among the types available on the market today. A better understanding of each may help you decide on the right choice.

Shaker Style

You may know Shaker style as the ultimate in minimalism, and the shutters that are made in this style are little different. They feature the clean lines and depth many people love about Shaker furniture, and instead of a number of louvered panels, you get a single panel for each window. They’re typically flat in nature, and they completely eliminate the light in a room or let it all in at once. They’re less flexible in terms of light control than many others, but they offer a simplicity other types just don’t.

Plantation Shutters

These are the most common type of shutters you’ll find both in homes and on the market today. They typically have wide louvers, and you can decide how much light and air you want to let in a room with this type of shutter. The popularity of this choice means one other thing for you – lots of options when it comes to wood and style. You can choose from faux wood shutters, which may help save you some money to other options including plenty of bright colors to meet your needs.

Cafe Style

If you love the look of shutters but hate the fact that they’re going to cover your whole window, cafe-style may be the way forward. They were originally popular in France where they covered the bottom half of windows to offer patrons some privacy, and they can do the same for your kitchen or any space in your home where you need a little privacy but you want lots of natural light too. Like plantation shutters, they’re typically louvered so you can control the amount of light that comes into your space.

Shutters for doors are also possible. They typically come styled like plantation shutters do. Installed over French doors or patio doors, they’re one of the best window coverings on the market today. They’re an elegant alternative when you consider most people only look to drapes or vertical blinds.

Ready to get started? We offer a great selection of all of these types of shutters as well as custom shutters to match the style in your home. To learn more about how we can help, contact us today.

Think a valance would look great in that room? You’re not alone. Valances are one of the least expensive window treatments you can buy, and they’re a great choice in almost every room, especially given the fact that they can complement existing window treatments and help give you that fresh look you want. As you begin to search for custom window valance options to better meet your needs, though, you’re going to run into many types of valances. Understanding the differences between them is key to getting the look you want.

Valances for Windows – Which is Right for You?

So, what’s going to work in your home? Take a look at each type available today to help you make your decision.

• Rod Pocket Valances: These look like short curtains – literally. They have a casing stitched to the top of them so they can slide into the rod you’ll hang them on, too, a bit like some curtains do. If you’re looking for simple bathroom window valances, these are the right choice.
• Tab Top Valances: Instead of that casing stitched to the top, these have big, beautiful loops at the top. They’re designed to wrap around the rod or pole you’ve chosen. You may see a few of these as tie-tops, and in those cases, the strips of fabric are made to be tied to the rod itself. They make great kitchen window valances, and they work well in other spaces as well.
• Festoon Valances: If you’ve ever seen valances that seem to simply be a draped piece of fabric, you’ve seen a festoon valance. They’re sometimes called swags, and typically, they’re paired with jabots, a second type of valance. The jabots were initially made to hide the seams of the festoon, but today, they work to continue the swag look in the window.
• Ascot Valances: Ascots are triangular, and they typically have a beautiful fringe on the edges. Often it’s either beaded or includes tassels, and you can use as many ascot points as you like, but each is usually its own section.
• Scalloped Valances: The bottom edge of these valances is a series of circular fabric cuts that lie across the window opening. In some cases, they’re gathered to present a slightly puffier appearance.
• Balloon Valances: These are gathered valances that have the puffy appearance of balloons. In some cases, they even include polyfill to help enhance the puffier look.
• Scarf Valances: If you like the look of swag valances, but you’re looking for something a little lighter, a scarf valance might be the way to go. These are typically sheer valances that look like you’ve draped an incredibly long scarf over the curtain rod.

Which Window Valances Are Right For Me?

With so many different choices, it may be difficult to decide what’s going to work in your home. The first step is to think about the style of your home. For example, if you have a country, rustic style living room, you may want to go with something like a tab top option to help add to the rustic atmosphere. A modern style may demand something with cleaner lines like an ascot valance. Beyond that, you’ll want to consider window shape as well. Maybe your windows are tall and elegant. In cases like that, a scarf valance might help complement the shape of your windows. Shorter windows that are rather wide might be calling out for scallops to help it look a little longer.

After you’ve chosen the right shape, the next step is to think about fabrics. Selecting fabrics for your valance is a bit like choosing the right material for custom drapes. Here, color isn’t the only concern. Instead, you have to think about several aspects including color, patterns, and even fabric weight to make sure your new valances look like the perfect complement to your space.

Whether you’ve read about a style you like or you’re hoping for something completely different, we can help. Window valances can look amazing in almost any space, and custom options are ideal no matter what the style of the room or the other window treatments involved. Contact us for custom window valances today or to talk about what might look great in your home.

When it comes to window treatments, you have lots of choices. Drapes, shades, and shutters all work well, but for many people, vertical window blinds are the single best choice on the market today. Why are these the ideal window covering in most settings? For most shoppers, these three reasons usually make the top of the list to buy vertical blinds.

1. Lots of Colors!

One reason so many people buy vertical blinds is the wide variety of colors available. Think they just come in white and off-white? It’s been some time since you’ve shopped for vertical blinds. Today, you can find vertical blinds in a number of different colors and shades that were specifically designed for your space. You can even order custom vertical blinds in the perfect color to match your space.

Imagine going with earthy, natural colors to match your beautiful, neutral den or office space. Maybe you’d rather go with a beautiful green to match your retro kitchen. Perhaps you want something dark to go with your man-cave space. No matter what color scheme works for your space, there are vertical blinds that might match to help enhance your space.

2. Easy to Clean!

No one wants window treatments that are tough to clean, but when you really think about vertical blinds, you’re going to realize pretty quickly just how low maintenance these window coverings are. Think about it for a moment – what are vertical blinds? They’re slats of various materials, and that means that a lint roller or a vacuum cleaner or even a damp cloth can be used to clean your blinds. It’s one of the easiest treatments you’ll ever clean, and that makes it the perfect addition to your home.

3. Save Money!

Not everyone bases their window treatment buying decision on price, but for many people, it plays a huge role. Vertical blinds fit the bill here. They’re one of the most affordable treatments on the market today, and that means they should fit the budget for every room in your house.

Ready to find vertical blinds that will meet your needs? Give us a call at Gallery of Shades at 480.643.0014 today.

There are hundreds of window covering options available today, and selecting the right one to meet your budget and the design needs of your home isn’t always easy. Many people, though, choose to buy roller shades for a number of different reasons. Despite the latest and greatest options on the market, they’re selecting a choice that is centuries old.

Why Do So Many People Choose Roller Shades?

With so many different choices in today’s window covering market, why are roller shades making such a powerful impact? You might be surprised at the benefits behind this choice. First, they’re pretty budget-friendly. While some people spend thousands on various window coverings, roller shades can be installed at a fraction of that cost, so they fit into almost any budget.

That’s not the only reason people select this window covering, though. They’re also easy to clean. The folds, louvres, headrails, and slats of today’s window covering choices are dust magnets, and it’s tough to find the right tool and product to clean them. Roller shades, by contrast, are a single piece of material (whether fabric or something synthetic). Not only are they less likely to pick up the grime that accumulates on every surface in your home, but should they do so, it’s pretty easy to clean them with a damp rag.

They’re also a fairly safe choice. With many roller shades, you don’t have to worry about cords that kids or pets might get into. Most options are completely cordless, and that means no childproofing is necessary. You can even buy motorized roller shades today that will make it even easier to operate.

More than that, though, roller shades offer maximum privacy. When mounted correctly, they cover the entire window, completely eliminating any light gaps you might find with other types of window coverings.

Perhaps the most important reason people invest in roller shades, though, is that they have the ability to provide a room with simple, clean lines. That translates to incredible versatility, which means they’ll fit with almost any decor. Even if you choose to redecorate in a year or two, the chances are good that your roller shades will still look great in your home. 

How Do You Make Them Look Great in Your Home?

For some people, the one potential drawback of even the best roller shades is that they are traditional looking. But there are ways to ensure they look fantastic in your home, though. The best way is to ensure that you’re measuring and hanging them correctly. Choosing an inside mount over an outside mount means a streamlined, discreet look.

You may want to think about hardware as well. While you love the function behind a roller shade, you may not love the look of the roll at the top, and you can disguise that with either a valance or an integrated valance, which is essentially a box at the top of the shade to help hide the roller. A carefully finished bottom can help give traditional roller shades a little something extra too.

You’ll also want to think about color and fabric choices. Roller shades are no longer confined to white and off-white. Instead, you can order them in a number of different colors to complement a room or even different fabric choices. If you do choose to go with a bit of color, think about how it might impact the color of any light you choose to filter through the shade (something you need to think about if you go with a roller shade that has a range of opacity).

We’ll be happy to help you select roller shades for your home to better meet your needs. Contact us today to learn more.

What do you look for in a window covering choice? If you’re like most people, you’re looking for a combination of three things – something that is visually attractive to the interior space, something that provides you a beautiful view of the outside world, and something that provides you with privacy when you want it the most. While there are many different options available, one of the most exciting choices on the market today is the Hunter Douglas Pirouette window shades.

What are Pirouette Shades?

This new window covering option is designed from contoured fabric vanes on a sheer backing. The vanes can be opened or closed to better meet your needs. A three-dimensional window covering, they can be installed on windows of all shapes and sizes, which is great news if not all of your windows are rectangular.

The Unique Benefits of Pirouette Window Shades

Wondering why this option is becoming more popular? Many people buy pirouette shades because they offer some unique benefits other window covering choices just don’t.

Opacity Control

With traditional window coverings like blinds and shades, opacity control just isn’t possible. They’re opaque, so the light doesn’t come in once they’re closed. If you open them, the light comes in completely. While you have some opacity control, typically it’s not as much as you’d like to have. Hunter Douglas Pirouette window shades are quite different in this regard. The fabric vanes that make up this covering can expand to close the shade, which provides privacy and a bit of diffused light. They can also be contracted, though, to give you a clear view of the outside world.

Easy to Operate

With Pirouette window shades, you can choose from three different control options, all of which are incredibly easy to operate. The EasyRise choice is a single loop. Pull once, and it will lift your shades. Pull a second time to close them. If you’re concerned about children or pets, you can select the UltraGlide control system. It raises, lowers, or tilts your shades with a retractable cord. You can also select the PowerView Motorization option. With a remote control or your phone, you can decide just where you want your shades and how much opacity you want in the room.

Classic Styles

One of the best parts about Pirouette Window shades is the fact that you can select the type of fabric you want, so no matter how you’ve decorated your home, these were designed to match. Hunter Douglas has 63 different color swatches available to make sure you get the right choice to meet your needs. More than that, though, you can choose from light filtering fabrics for those spaces where you want some soft light even when these shades are closed and room darkening fabrics so you can bring a bit of extra color into the room when they’re closed. Either way, they’re going to look absolutely amazing on your windows.

Durable

Maybe the best part of these window coverings is the fact that they’re a Hunter Douglas product. One of the most well-known names on the window covering market today, these options are going to last until you’re ready to redecorate and beyond. They also come with a limited lifetime warranty to give you added peace of mind. Whether they’re going to be in your child’s bedroom or your family room or in both, this is the choice if you’re looking for durability in your window coverings.

You can find Pirouette shades when you stop by. Make an appointment today, and we’ll help you order custom window shades designed to meet the needs of your home.

Not sure where to begin searching for drapes for your home? Hoping to make a statement with your living or dining room drapes, but you have no idea how to do that? Fortunately, this guide can help. Whether you decide to buy custom drapes or you just want to grab an off-the-shelf choice, there are many things you can do to land on those perfect drapes.

It All Starts With the Right Fabric

The best window treatments for the dining room or any room in your house are those that work with your decor. Your fabric choice should complement the style you have right now. More than that, though, you’ll want to be sure it’s a functional choice for that room. Imagine, for example, you’re looking for the perfect drapes for your industrial style dining room. You’re going to want to choose a fairly neutral, lightweight fabric to play with that, but the chances are good that you’re going to want a fabric that allows enough light into the space. If, on the other hand, you’re trying to select a fabric for the drapes in your bedroom,  you might not only want to look for the right colors, but also something that gives you a bit more privacy. You likely also want a denser fabric to help block some light as you try to sleep.

Length Matters Too

What might begin with the perfect fabric could go wrong if you don’t select the right length for your custom drapes. Keep in mind that hanging panels a bit higher than you need them to be means making your window look bigger. The length will also depend a bit on the room’s current style. Modern looks have drapes right at the floor. More traditional looks have them hitting the floor in a bit of a puddle.

Book An In-Home Consultation

Custom dining room drapes or those designed for other spaces in your home aren’t always easy to discuss without having a design professional in your home. To learn more about our in-home consultations, contact us today.

Whether it’s a gorgeous set of patio doors or you have a set of French doors in your home office, you probably know that window coverings for doors pose unique challenges. The doors themselves likely make your home look nothing short of amazing, but choosing the right window coverings for doors can be frustrating. Understanding a bit more about the options you have available, though, may help.

Blinds or Shades

As you shop, you’re going to find that your choices come down to two basic options – blinds and shades. While they come in many different styles, materials, and colors, you’re almost always going to be able to boil it down to those two options. It can be a little tough to choose between the two, but considering the primary aspects of both may help.

Blinds tend to be a much harder window covering. Whether you’re looking at the latest wood patio door blinds or vinyl sliding door blinds, they’re all composed of slats that are hung either vertically or horizontally. You lower or pull them across the window, and individually, those slats form a barrier between you and the outside world. Typically they’ve been controlled by a manual cord, but there are a number of motorized window treatment options on the market today. While the slats give you the ability to close them tightly to help shut out the light and give you the privacy they need, they can also be adjusted to let some light in. Blinds were designed for those who want the traditional, classic look in any space.

Shades are a much softer window treatment. They were designed to continuously roll across the door opening, and they usually fit pretty snugly in the space. As with blinds, they work either across your door or up and down, and they can be drawn by a cord or with an electric unit. You won’t find slats with this type of window treatment, and that can mean less ability to control the light coming in. You have to choose whether to raise the shade and let the light in or close it and keep the light out. The only way to change that is to choose patio door shades made from a light filtering fabric, like solar shades, that give you more opacity.

What to Consider

So, what’s it going to be for the glass door – blinds or shades? Still not sure? There are a few things you may want to consider before you make a purchase.

• How Much Privacy Do You Need? This needs to be one of your biggest concerns when you’re trying to decide between shades and blinds for your patio doors. If the doors face your fenced in backyard, it may not be an issue. If, however, they face the street or even the neighbors’ yards, you may need a greater level of privacy. In most cases, the most private window coverings tend to be shades.
• Is Temperature A Problem? Some people have temperature issues with sliding glass and patio doors. If that’s a concern for you, you will certainly want to look into an insulating window covering, like solar shades, that keeps the heat and the cold out and helps your home maintain your ideal temperature. Both blinds and shades can offer you that option, but you may have to do a bit of searching to find the right choice to meet your needs.
• What Level of Light Control Do You Want? If you’re hoping to have that sunlight streaming across the kitchen table day after day, you probably aren’t looking for a window covering with a lot of options. If, however, you only occasionally want that light coming in, you may want to choose a set of patio door blinds that allow you to decide when the light is allowed to come in and when you’d really prefer it stays out in the yard where it belongs.

Whether you’ve made a final decision or you still need a bit of help coming up with what’s right for your space, we’re here to help. Contact us today to learn more about what we can do for your patio or sliding glass doors as well as every window in your home.