Natural light – it’s a trend many homeowners absolutely love. It helps add new dimensions to a space. It can increase your body’s serotonin levels. It literally costs you nothing.  The right windows can mean lots of natural light. Unfortunately, they can mean something else too – problematic energy efficiency ratings.

Good window treatments, though, can help to mitigate that problem. Which ones might drive down your energy bill? Take a look at some ways to save energy with beautiful window treatment choices.

• Solar Shades: These were designed to keep the sunlight out of your home, and that means minimizing any transfer of heat. While they were once relegated to a single design, these days, they’re available in a fairly wide variety of designs, which is good news for those looking to enhance their home with solar shades.
• Insulating Cellular Shades: If you’re looking for a trendy choice that looks great in any window, cellular shades are the way to go. They have honeycomb shaped cells between panels of fabric. Those cells have an essential job – to trap hot or cold air and keep it from coming into your home. That means thermal performance with which few other types of window coverings can compete. They come in an array of colors and patterns, and they pair well with drapes if you’re looking for a bit more energy efficiency.
• Custom Drapes: When it comes to window treatments, custom drapes have always been the single best option, and for good reason. They can make a room. They add texture to a space, and they create coherency unlike anything else. When closed, they keep the heat and cold out and the perfect temperature inside. In fact, some studies have shown that custom drapes on windows that receive direct daylight in the summer can reduce the heat coming in your home by thirty percent.

Great window treatments are one of the many ways to save energy in your home, and we can help. To learn more about all of our window treatment options, give us a call today.

If you’re like most people, your kitchen is the most important gathering space in your home. As such, you want it to be absolutely beautiful, and one solid way to ensure that’s possible is to choose the right kitchen window treatments. This is not only an important style step, it can also be an important functional one. After all, you may need to clean your kitchen window coverings more than any other in your home, so the right choice here is essential. What are your best options? Take a look.

• Kitchen Shades: You want to add some light filtering when needed, but you want a minimalist approach. Kitchen shades are the best way to go in situations like this. They can often be wiped down with soap and water, and they keep the sun out when you need it most. They’re typically slimmer than many other choices, and they’re easy to hang, too.
• Faux Wood Blinds: Water splotches, steam, kitchen messes – they’re all possible in a space like this one, and faux wood blinds can take the abuse. They’re easily wiped clean with a damp cloth, and they look absolutely timeless. A flawless choice, they’re going to be one of the most talked about centerpieces available in terms of window treatments. What’s more, though, is that you can pair them with another option like a custom kitchen valance or custom curtains to spice things up.
• Custom Kitchen Curtains: Curtains are one of the single most versatile window treatments available today. There are so many different looks you can create with curtains, and they’re fairly easy to clean. A trip to the dry cleaners will often solve the problem. Not sure you want full-length curtains? A custom kitchen valance or even cafe style curtains will offer you the same look without the excess fabric.

Not sure which is right for your space? Let Gallery of Shades help. We offer free in-home design consultation. We bring our design studio to you to help you select the perfect product, fabric and material. Learn more when you contact us today.

Sheer window treatments are often relegated to the “My grandma had those” category of window treatments. While many older homes have sheers installed, the reality is that they don’t just have to fit with a single style or time period. Instead, they’re just as popular today as they once were, and for good reason. They’re timeless, and they fit with almost any style. In fact, sheers are taking on a life of their own thanks to innovations like Motorized Luminette PowerView Shades.

The Many Benefits of Sheer

There are a number of reasons you may want to consider going with a sheer window treatment in your home. They are absolutely the perfect choice, no matter what your decorating style. More than that, though, they offer the bright natural light so many want to make part of their homes today along with the privacy required in today’s world. If you have lots going on in a room in terms of style, sheer might be the perfect way to go, as it can mean a simplicity that could be important in tying the entire room together.

Sheers aren’t just a stand-alone solution, either. Instead, they work well with many other window treatments, offering the touch of light you need when your curtains are open without the concern about privacy.

Maybe the biggest benefit of sheer, though, is that it comes in a much better form today – motorized  Luminette blinds.

Meet The Newest Sheer Player

If you’re not familiar with motorized window treatments yet, it’s time to at least consider them. At the touch of a button, your windows could be uncovered to let all of that gorgeous light in. Need some privacy? Ready to turn things down for the evening? Another touch of the button rolls out your motorized vertical blinds or window sheers. Motorized Luminette PowerView Shades are the single best choice you can make for your home today, as they’re simple to use, and they add a touch of magic to your decor.

To learn more about Motorized Luminette PowerView Shades, contact Gallery of Shades at 480-643-0014 today.

Your home is you, and these days, you have complete control over absolutely everything in your home. Use your phone to adjust the thermostat, check to see who is at the door, or even turn the lights on before you get home. Now, you can add one more way to make your home a reflection of you when you buy Duette shades from Hunter Douglas. The best window shades on the market today for any smart home, they give you complete control over your windows.

More Than Motorized Shades

Think Duette is just another motorized blind option on the market that you can control with a remote? They’re so much more. They give you complete control over your windows with a single touch. Once you install Duette, you have the ability to block light, control your privacy settings, and much more.

An Energy-Efficient Add-On

Cellular shades are known to be more efficient, but at the heart of Duette is a honeycomb design taken one step further. Hunter Douglas designed Duette to be a honeycomb within a honeycomb, which means they’re the most energy-efficient choice available. This unique, patented technology can stop home heat loss by up to 40% in the winter and it can make an Arizona summer much more bearable by stopping unwanted solar heat during the warmer months by up to 80%.

Redefining Custom Shades

Duette offers 200 different color and texture choices. No matter what room of your home or what your design and color scheme, Duette will fit right in. Available in various opacities and pleat sizes, this is the choice you want in every room of your house.

Duette shades offer you the ability to completely control the light, warmth, and privacy of your home. They’re easily the best window shades on the market today. Contact us to get the custom shades you need most with Duette.

Think you’ll stay in your home forever? Statistics suggest most people move 11 times over the course of their lives. Often these moves come with a new job or a push to get to the new location fast, and for your home, that means one thing – marketability. While you can’t always plan for your home to be more marketable, you can pay attention to the little changes you make, ensuring that each one increases the value of your home. If you do, when you have to move, you’ll have a home that sells far faster. One simple change may be in your window covering. Wooden plantation shutters are a great choice if you’re looking to add value to your home.

What Are They?

You’ve likely seen plantation shutters in the past, even if you weren’t quite sure what they were. These are the wide window blinds you might imagine on a southern home. They have wood slats that open with the help of a rod down the center. Fully closed, they block out the light completely. Fully open, they let in quite a bit of light. They’re literally attached to the window frame when installed. They’re one of the best looking window treatments available.

A More Expensive Window Treatment

While wooden plantation shutters look amazing, many who consider this option shy away at the cost. They’re easily one of the most expensive choices available today, even among shutters. In fact, some surveys have shown that homeowners spend thousands on this window treatment. Wondering why you’d want to go that far? It means a serious return on your investment should you choose to sell your home. In fact, these stylish window shutters are the only type of window treatment that are actually considered a fixture in your home, thus raising your overall home value. Many believe the ROI on these window treatments is quite high, and that could mean good things when you’re thinking about marketability.

More Than Monetary Value

Shutters are not only one of the best looking window treatments, but they also do so much more for your home than increase its value. They also help to improve energy efficiency. They’re easy to clean, and maintaining them is simple. They’re the best custom window treatments you can buy today.

Statistically speaking, you’re going to move in your lifetime. Stylish window shutters can help attract buyers to your current home far faster, giving you just what you need to make that move. Contact Gallery of Shades today to learn more about our plantation shutters and to schedule a in-home design consultation.

It’s easy to say “energy efficiency just doesn’t matter to me,” or “I don’t have time to worry about that right now.” Having a more energy efficient home may seem like a massive burden to tackle, and because you don’t really know where to start, that can lead to complete apathy that pushes you to feel this way. Energy efficiency, though, is incredibly important. After all, it may not only help bigger problems like global warming, but it could also put quite a bit more cash back in your pocket. One way to easily create a bit more energy efficiency is with pleated shades for the home.

What Are Pleated Shades?

Pleated shades are an entirely different kind of window covering. Before you unfurl them, they look a bit like blinds. They stack like blinds at the top of your window, but when you put them all the way down, you’ll quickly notice they’re a single piece of fabric. With a small stack height, they compress tightly, offering you minimization when you want to let the light in. They come in a wide range of colors, so they can match almost any room in your home, and they’re less expensive than many other options available. You can even buy custom pleated shades in a variety of different fabric options.

Why Are They Energy Efficient?

If you’re looking to become more energy efficient, you have to focus on heat loss in the winter and heat gain in the summer. Of all the surfaces in your home, your windows are the ones that are most likely to lose or gain that heat, depending on the season. More carefully selecting your window treatments, though, can help put an end to that problem, and that’s where pleated shades come in.

Pleated shades for the home are a single piece of fabric. Unlike traditional blinds, there are no gaps in that fabric to allow the warm or cold air to pass. That means you reduce any flow through a window, thus making the rooms involved more comfortable.

Ready to explore this option for your home and make at least one step toward energy efficiency? Give us at Gallery of Shades a call today.

Creating an entertainment or relaxation area that’s an extension of your home can be done easily with just a couple of new additions. Many people are looking to enhance their backyard with an outdoor living space, and it makes sense. When it’s warm outside, that’s exactly where you want to be, so why not do something more than have a gorgeous lawn and patio? Why not make the most of it with a bit of furniture, perhaps a kitchen space, and reap the benefits and happiness that being outside can provide for you? Not sure where to begin? These tips can help.

Think About Your Ideal Space

The first step you’ll want to take is to think about how you’ll use the outdoor living area. Will you be entertaining? Are you just looking for a spot to relax and unwind? How often will you eat outside? Consider how you’ll use the space so you know what hardscaping options to consider and how to decorate.

Add Furniture

This step relies on your plans. If you think you’ll just use your outdoor living space to relax and unwind, add a variety of comfortable seating choices. An outdoor firepit or fireplace is always a nice touch too. If you think you’ll be dining outside on a regular basis, you may want to consider two distinct areas – a living space and a dining space. Make certain, however, that if entertaining is on your agenda, you give yourself plenty of room to do so.

Enhance It With Outdoor Shades

The last step is pretty universal, no matter how you plan to use your new outdoor space. Choose the best outdoor patio shades to help build things out a bit. Blinds for your patio mean you can use it no matter what time of day the sun hits your outdoor living space. The best shades for outdoor living help to filter the light (and the heat) so you can always enjoy the comfort without the hassle of the sun shining in your eyes or making it far too hot to have a seat and soak up the peace your outdoor space has created for you.

To learn more about our custom outdoor shades, contact us today.

Motorized shades offer the best of both worlds: shade for your home and family, and convenience with ease of use as well.  Silhouette motorized PowerView® shades, composed of a sheer material that enables light to filter in, while filtering the harsh glare out, provide a level of comfort, convenience, and efficiency that can work well in virtually in room in your home or office.

When opened all the way, these remote control shades provide light and the view can filter easily into a room.  When closed completely, a room can be darkened but in a soft way as Silhouettes, with their sheer facings, offer a diffused, and thereby softened, light left to filter through.

PowerView® Motorized Shades

Remote control shades can raise or lower with the touch of a button.  Control the movement of your motorized shades from bed in the morning or from your couch at night without getting up first.  Light can come streaming in when you desire it or be blocked out when you wish it as well; all with the touch of button.  With the best motorized window treatments, there will be no more having to manually lift shades or pull cords.  They can also be controlled by an app on your smart phone.

Motorized shades allow one more feature of your home or office to be fully integrated with the rest of your smart home devices.  You can also choose settings for specific times of day when your shades can automatically raise and lower.  If you’ve left during the daylight hours and will be returning at night, you can schedule your motorized shades to be closed when you arrive home, offering a protection of privacy.

Energy Savings

If you choose to connect your motorized shades to a smart home system, you can also save money on energy costs by allowing your HVAC system to react to the room temperature by raising and lowering shades as the outdoor temperatures warrant.  It is amazing how smart home devices can interact together to help your home stay comfortable and your energy costs stay down, effortlessly and efficiently.

Remote control shades have many benefits to offer.  Check out all the ways they can make your life easier and better.  Contact Gallery of Shades today.

Having an extra large window in your home can be a beautiful addition. It may be one of the things that convinced you to purchase the home in the first place. Being able to let in all that light and to see beautiful vistas is definitely something most homeowners like. Then you move in and you realize that finding large window blinds, ones that allow you to let light in when you want but also shut light out, is next to impossible. That is until you learn about Skyline Panel Track Blinds.

Traditional vertical blinds tend to not work well for extra large windows. When you have a window that is 10’ tall or over, you need to think outside the box and to find a solution that isn’t traditional and that will work to not only allow you to close the light out when you want, but to let it in as well. That’s where Skyline Panel Track Blinds come into play. These contemporary blinds are ideal because you can get them exactly the right size on the first try. Simply measure your window and look at the size of the panels and you’ll be able to figure out how many panels you’ll need to get the look you want. Make sure you account for a bit of overlapping if you truly want the blinds to darken the room fully.

It is important to note that to properly hang these types of large window blinds you’ll need a bit of a different type of curtain rod. These rods have two rods, instead of one, so that you can have one shade panel in the front and one in the back, allowing for that overlap that can truly darken a room. When you want to add light you can simply pull the panels back and let in the amount of light you’d like! If you have large windows, panel blinds may definitely be the right way to go for your home.

Contact Gallery of Shades today to learn more about Skyline Panel Track Blinds or any of our window treatment options.