Window Shades for Your Skylight

Skylights are great for creating visual interest in homes with high ceilings and or sloped ceilings.  They are also great for adding natural light into your room.  But they do have a few downsides that can be mitigated with window shades.  Some of the newer skylights come integrated with skylight blinds.  If you are lucky then you don’t need any of this information.  But if you have the older versions, this article is for you.

First a quick word on terms.  Some people call all window treatments, “blinds.”  So naturally they would call skylight shades, skylight blinds.  This is actually incorrect.  You cannot buy window blinds for skylights, the only choice are shades.

Anyways, back to business.  The first issues are heat gain and heat loss.  Clear skylights allow in significant sunlight during the day and therefore allow quite a bit of heat gain and during the summer months; this is generally unwelcome.  During the winter they can lose significant heat toward the night sky due to a principle called re-radiation.  The next issue is UV exposure which can, over time, cause damage and fading to the affected interiors of your room.

Fortunately, for those who get overwhelmed by choices, there are only a few “aftermarket” (for skylights that didn’t come integrated with a blind) window shades for skylights:  cellular shades, pleated shades and a specialized roller shade with an aluminum coated fabric.  Given the problem of heat gain and loss, the best choices of these three are the cellular shades and the roller shade, as they offer the most insulation.

Cellular shades, in addition to offering great insulation, are probably the most useful choice as they offer different levels of light-blocking, from sheer to room darkening, whereas the roller shade option is “on” or “off” from a light filtering perspective.  Regular cell shades come with one, two or three cells, or air pockets for insulation.  But most of the cellular skylight shades that I have seen are double cell. 

The other advantage that cellular shades has over roller shades is color variety; you can pretty much find any color you wish to compliment your décor.  Whereas, roller shades, as far as I know, are monochromatic.

There are a couple of brand-name manufacturers of cellular shades for skylights that you should be aware of: Hunter Douglas and Bali.  Of the two, Hunter Douglas is the most expensive.  If you are more price sensitive than brand sensitive, you can find a few private labels that are most likely made by Springs Window Fashions which are fairly equal in terms of quality.

What you should also know is that these three shades are specially made for skylights.  That is they come on tracks to support the shade at any position, and have a handle that can be operated manually or with an optional skylight pole, depending on how high the skylight is.

Though purchasing window shades for your skylights isn’t cheap, in the long run the expense will pay for itself in the form of reduced energy bills.  And they’ll look great while doing it.

To summarize, if you are in the market for skylight shades, take a look at cellular shades (not blinds).  They offer great insulation, light-filtering options and good looks. – David Brooks