A surge in popularity for roller shades has led many to ask how they can use these versatile shades. Roller shades have a tradition of being a basic, kind of a ?go to? product. As a product, there used to be a minimal premium on roller shades. People used them as a low cost method to darken their bedrooms. Roller shades used to be available in only a few colors, and could only be decorated with a handful of decorative trims or tassels. However, new innovations in decorative, as well as light filtering shade fabrics, have led to significant advances and increasingly more situations where roller shades can be used.

Blackout roller shades typically would work simply by covering the opening with a vinyl coated roller shade fabric which would block nearly all the light that tried to enter the window. Some light will enter on the sides of the roller shades, even if the shade is larger than the windows, however, the end result would have been usually enough for most. New systems however, build side channels onto the roller shades, allowing them to really block the light that tried to pass by the sides of the shades. These side channel roller shades are premium priced, but when attractive full light control is what you want, side channel blackout roller shades are what you need.

Premium roller shade fabric can be used to make attractive, usually translucent, decorative roller shades. Decorative roller shades is a growing part of this category. These attractive shades, when properly designed and sewn will hang flat and strait, and will present designs and styles that enliven your roller shades, not to mention living spaces. When decorative fabric is used, fabric roller shades can bring new found life to the windows and thus the spaces you decorate. In short, decorative roller shades give that finishing touch. This product, however, should contain one caveat. You cannot use any old fabric, particularly upholstery fabric, or a fabric that is not engineered for roller shades. Only true roller shade fabric can control to be straight and flat, so it can roll up onto the tubes evenly.

Now available in a tremendous range of styles and colors, one can easily decorate with roller shades. One should be looking for a flat and smooth appearance of the roller fabric, if a great design and appearance is what one wants. The quality fabrics for roller shades are made well and will certainly perform nicely. Choose your styles and then continue to choose from the range of colors. If the color you need is not available in the style you want, you can probably find a good choice fabric for the roller shades with the color you want somewhere. There are so many choices.

Roller shades are commonly selected for solar shading using a solar screen material. They result in much more decorative roller shades, which have a solar component, helping in environmental goals. As a result of the types of fabrics used on these shades, roller shades can lower heat and energy bills. There are several options in light management, measured by openness. This measurement is a method of comparing how much light will be allowed to pass through the roller shades. A view that has little light to fight can have a high openness. A view that is very bright, select a small figure for your roller shades.

With solar shade materials as roller shades, they can become energy management equipment. Consider that if a person needs to get dressed and want privacy, lowering a roller shade which still allows some light to enter the room will let an occupant leave the lights off, thus saving electricity with roller shades. One can have privacy and still permit some light to enter the spaces. Do that with old roller shades!

Roller shades no longer need to be a basic shade from the hardware store. Designers have found the many choices of decorative, blackout and solar shading roller shade materials available and have begun to use them, increasingly. It is this increasing demand from designers for more choices in roller shades that has benefited customers across the country, and will stimulate the decorative imagination to choose the best roller shades, and not just what is available.