Solar Shades

Westfield Solar Shades From Westfield Window Treatments

Openness picked against your own bare lot view

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Quick Answer

Quick answers on this service. What it suits, what it costs to run, how it gets measured and where it falls short. If something below rules it out for your room, that's useful information before you order.

  • Service: Solar Shades for Westfield homeowners
  • Service area: Westfield, IN and surrounding areas
    • Getting somebody out to measure is the easy part and happens on a normal schedule. After that the fabricator needs roughly two to five weeks. We give you a specific window when we write the order.
  • Insured and bonded
  • Serving Westfield, IN since 2008
Solar Shades Services

Expert Solar Shades for Westfield Homes

Westfield is the town in this county where solar shades earn their keep hardest, and the parcel record explains why. Only 834 of the city's 19,881 single family houses predate 1980, so almost nothing here has a mature tree in front of it. A house finished in 2023 on the 191st Street growth edge has a bare lot, planted saplings that won't shade a second story for a decade, and a rear elevation that faces whatever the section grid gave it. There is nothing at all between that glass and five o'clock in July.

Openness factor is the number that decides the product, and it's a trade rather than a quality scale. At 1 percent you get the most glare control and the least view. A 10 percent fabric keeps the view nearly intact and cuts much less. Three and five sit between. We bring openness cards and hold them up in the actual room against your actual view, because a 5 percent sample against a bare western horizon over open ground reads nothing like the same sample against a neighbor's roofline forty feet away.

There's a limit worth stating before anybody spends. A solar shade is an interior product, so by the time the fabric sees the energy it's already inside the glass. It's very good at glare, very good at reducing what fades behind it, and only partly effective on heat. Where a Chatham Hills or Wood Wind rear elevation faces open fairway with nothing on it, the more effective recommendation may be to stop the load outside instead, with an exterior shade under a porch roof or a retractable awning over the terrace.

When to Call

Signs You Need Solar Shades

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

The room is unusable from four o'clock in July

A screen washes out every afternoon in the same spot

You want the view kept and the glare gone

The lot is new and has no trees at all

Rear glass looks straight out over open fairway

Floors and furniture have started fading unevenly

Existing shades kill the glare by killing the view

A west great room wall is hot by mid afternoon

Our Process

How Westfield Window Treatments Handles Solar Shades

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

1

Visit at the bad hour

Where the schedule allows it, the measure happens when the room actually fails rather than at nine in the morning. Standing in a west facing great room at five in July tells you more about openness factor than any specification sheet. Where that isn't possible, we work from the compass heading, the lot condition and what the room gets used for.

2

Assess what's outside

Canopy is the variable and Westfield mostly doesn't have any. A bare 2024 lot, a twenty year old Oak Manor street and a fairway edge on a mature course are three different loads on the same heading. Open ground with no structure or planting gives an unbroken fetch, and that's the condition that pushes people a step lower in openness than they expected.

3

Test openness in place

Sample cards in 1, 3, 5 and 10 percent go up against the real view at the real time. You see immediately how much of the fairway or the neighbor's elevation survives at each level and how much glare goes with it. Most people choose lower openness once they see it against real light instead of against a showroom window.

4

Pick fabric color deliberately

Dark fabric gives sharper view through and better glare control, because the fibers absorb rather than scatter light in front of your eye. Light fabric reflects more energy back out and washes the view out more. In a room where people sit and look out, dark is usually what we specify. For a room where heat matters and nobody watches the view, light.

5

Measure and set the mount

Three widths and three heights on every opening, with a diagonal on each. Solar fabric is usually specified with generous overlap on an outside mount, because light coming past the edge of an inside mounted shade is exactly the glare it was bought to stop. Where an inside mount is wanted for looks, the gap goes on the quote in inches first.

6

Install and explain the aging

Brackets level across the run, full travel tested, and a look at the assembly from outside as well as in, because street side appearance matters on a corner lot. Then the honest note: the room side face fades faster than the street side, so in a few years the shade reads differently from either side. That's normal, and it's a reason to order a room together.

Real Project Photos

Solar Shades in Westfield

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

Custom shades measured and installed in Westfield
Scope of Work

What Solar Shades Includes

Every Westfield 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 Westfield

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 Westfield. 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. Westfield Window Treatments works from measured openings and real elevations in Hamilton 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 Westfield 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 Westfield homeowners considering solar shades.

It depends on the view you're protecting and the glare you're fighting, which is why we bring the cards rather than guess. As a starting point: 1 and 3 percent for a hard western exposure with nothing shading it, which describes most of the newer subdivisions and every fairway lot in the city; 5 percent as the general purpose choice; 10 percent only where something outside is already doing part of the work, which in Westfield means the older Countryside and Oak Manor streets. Weave matters too, so we hold two fabrics of the same stated openness side by side when the choice is close. Where two rooms in the same house face different directions, we'd rather specify two openness factors than one compromise number that suits neither room properly.
Yes in daylight, and less than you expect at low openness. A 3 percent fabric gives a usable, slightly veiled view outward on a bright day. After dark it reverses completely: you see almost nothing out, and a lit room gives people outside a clear view in. That reversal is the thing nobody mentions at the point of sale. If evening privacy matters as well as daytime glare, the answer is a second treatment or a dual arrangement rather than a lower openness number, which would only ruin the daytime view. One practical consequence: a home office with a screen usually wants a step lower in openness than the same window would need for general living, so we ask what the room is for.
It reduces the load and doesn't eliminate it, because it sits inside the glass. What it does very well is kill the direct beam and the glare that make a room feel hotter than the thermometer says. If the complaint is genuinely temperature rather than brightness, the better spend is stopping the energy before it arrives: an exterior solar shade on a covered porch or a retractable awning over a west patio both work on the outside of the glass. On a bare Westfield lot that distinction is worth real money. There's a sequencing point too. If an exterior shade is likely later, mounting the interior shade with that in mind avoids two treatments fighting for the same head detail.
It slows it and it doesn't halt it. NFRC guidance attributes roughly 40 to 60 percent of fading damage to ultraviolet radiation, with visible light, heat, humidity, fabric age and dye chemistry making up the balance, so cutting the ultraviolet share buys years rather than permanence. On a west elevation the low afternoon sun reaches deep into a room, so fading shows on rugs and furniture several feet back from the glass rather than only on the boards by the window. That deeper zone is what a low openness fabric on the worst elevation actually protects. Furniture placement helps as well, and it's free: moving a rug or a piece of furniture out of the worst two hours of afternoon sun does more than most people expect.
Because the two faces live different lives. The street side takes direct exposure. The room side takes reflected and diffuse light plus everything coming back off a light floor, and the two age at different rates and sometimes in different directions. Adjacent shades in the same room age differently too, depending which part of the day reaches them. It isn't a defect. It's one of the reasons to order a whole room from a single dye lot at the outset, because a shade added in year eight won't match neighbors that have already moved. That uneven aging is also why we photograph and record the fabric and lot at install, so a replacement years later at least starts from accurate information.
Yes, in a way that surprises people. Golf frontage gives you an unbroken sight line with no neighboring structure to interrupt the sun, so the exposure runs later and harder than an interior lot on the same heading. At Chatham Hills the course and the whole 800 acre tract were farm ground before 2016, so there's no established canopy anywhere. At Wood Wind the course itself is mature and there's some tree structure along the fairway edges, which measurably changes the answer. Same product category, different openness, and that's why we look rather than assume. Fairway lots also tend to have the best view in the house on the same wall as the worst load, which is exactly why openness gets tested rather than assumed.
Yes, and those units need thinking about. A very tall shade carries a bigger tube, more fabric weight and a larger light gap on an inside mount, and shades past 120 inches or a four to one height to width ratio are specifically called out for larger gaps. On a wall of mulled openings, which is standard on current Westfield elevations, we split at the existing divisions so the shade lines follow the architecture. Motorization is worth pricing at that height, and so is the access needed to install and later service it. Splitting also helps with service, since a tall single shade that needs attention means a lift visit while a split unit can often be handled from the floor level below.
Vacuum it with a brush attachment once or twice a year and resist doing anything more energetic. Solar mesh is an open weave and it holds airborne dust, which greys the fabric so gradually that you don't notice until you hold a fresh sample against it. Water and rubbing are what actually damage it, because they distort the weave and leave a mark that dries in permanently. On a new build there's a specific first year issue: construction dust in the house settles into any open weave fast, so the first clean often comes sooner than the routine one would. In a house still being built out around you, it's worth waiting until the neighboring lots are finished before doing a final clean, because that dust keeps arriving.
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 Westfield 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 Westfield

We measure and install in every one of these Westfield 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
Westfield, IN and Surrounding Areas

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