Blackout Shades

Fishers Blackout Shades

Actually dark, which means covering the edges too

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Quick Answer

What follows covers the practical side of this service: how it's measured, what changes the price, how long fabrication takes and what maintenance it needs once it's hanging.

  • Service: Blackout Shades for Fishers homeowners
  • Service area: Fishers, IN and surrounding areas
    • A restring, a new cord lock, a tilt mechanism or a dead motor battery gets handled far faster than a new order, because nothing has to be built. New custom work runs on the factory's two to five week clock.
  • Insured and bonded
  • Serving Fishers, IN since 2008
Blackout Shades Services

Expert Blackout Shades for Fishers Homes

Blackout is the one word in this trade that causes more disappointment than any other, so here's the honest version first. A blackout fabric blocks essentially all light through the fabric. It does nothing about the edges, and on an inside mount there are always edges, because the shade has to be narrower than the opening to run freely. That gap isn't a defect and it isn't a manufacturing tolerance problem. It's the geometry of putting a rectangle inside another rectangle.

The published numbers make it concrete. Lutron states inside mount light gaps of three quarters of an inch per side on its Roller 20 and 64 systems, and thirteen sixteenths on the larger Roller 100, 150 and 300, against a standard factory deduction of one sixteenth per side. Shades 120 inches and taller, or with a height to width ratio of 4 to 1 or greater, get larger gaps than that. Fishers produces a lot of shades over 120 inches, because 73.8% of its single family parcels record two stories or more.

So a room that genuinely has to go dark needs one of three things: an outside mount with real overlap onto the wall around the opening, side channels running down each side of the shade, or a light blocking pocket at the head. Each of those changes the look and the price, and each of them works. We quote the room that way from the start rather than selling an inside mount and hoping the customer doesn't have a baby who wakes at five in June.

When to Call

Signs You Need Blackout Shades

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

A bright frame of daylight outlines the shade every morning

The nursery gets light at five in the morning in June

A blackout shade was bought and the room still isn't dark

The lower level media room washes out during the day

Somebody works nights and sleeps while the sun is up

A street light shines straight into the primary bedroom

The blackout lining has started to crack where it rolls

Two shades on one wall let light in at different edges

Our Process

How Fishers Window Treatments Handles Blackout Shades

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

1

Define what dark means

We ask how dark the room actually has to be, because the honest answers range from noticeably dimmer to no visible light at all. A guest bedroom used four times a year and a nursery for a baby who wakes at first light are different specifications with different prices. Getting this stated out loud at the start is the single thing that prevents the disappointment this product is famous for.

2

Choose the mount strategy

Outside mount with generous overlap onto the wall is the simplest and cheapest way to get genuinely dark, and in a Fishers house with flat drywall around the opening it usually looks fine. Side channels give a tighter result and read more technical. A light blocking pocket at the head kills the gap above the shade. We price the options separately so you can see what each level of dark costs.

3

Pick fabric and product

Blackout roller, blackout cellular and a lined drapery panel all get a room dark by different routes. A cellular adds thermal performance, which matters in a Zone 5A winter. A roller gives the cleanest line and the tightest side channel fit. Drapery does dark and softness together and is often the right answer in a Fishers primary bedroom where the room deserves fabric anyway.

4

Measure and state the gap

Three widths and three heights per opening, plus a diagonal and a depth reading at the stop. Then we write the expected light gap on the quote in inches, per side, for the product being ordered, with the note that shades over 120 inches or past a 4:1 ratio get larger gaps. Nobody should learn that number after installation, and having it in writing is the difference between a specification and a promise.

5

Look at the other light paths

A dark room is a system rather than a shade. We look at the gap under the door, at a transom above the opening, at an uncovered arch, and at whether a second window in the room is being left untreated. In many Fishers bedrooms the shade was never the problem: a half round transom over the window was pouring light in the whole time.

6

Install and test dark

We hang it, level it, fit side channels or a pocket where specified, and then close the room up and look at it. Where the timing allows, we would rather test it against real daylight than describe what it should do. If a path is still open, we would rather find it standing in the room with you than hear about it in a phone call three weeks later.

Real Project Photos

Blackout Shades in Fishers

Photographs from real blackout shades jobs completed by our crew in Fishers and surrounding areas.

Custom shades measured and installed in FishersPlantation shutters fitted to a Fishers windowCellular shades in a Fishers living room
Scope of Work

What Blackout Shades Includes

Every Fishers job is documented item by item. Here is what the crew covers.

The actual goal settled first, since a room dark enough to sleep in and a genuinely dark room need different products

Every opening measured and checked on the diagonal, because a shade hanging out of level leaks down one side

Outside light sources logged at the measure: a street lamp, a security light, headlights sweeping a bend

Wall surface above and beside the opening checked for somewhere flat and solid to land channels

Outside mount specified wherever real darkness is the goal, with overlap written in inches on every side

Side channels specified where the room has to be dark and the wall around the opening will take them

A light-blocking pocket or a closed cassette specified at the top so daylight can't come over the roller

Factory deduction disclosed up front, since Lutron publishes 1/16 inch per side and that width has to go somewhere

Inside-mount light gap stated in writing, using Lutron's published 3/4 inch per side on Roller 20/64

Tall or narrow units flagged, because shades past 120 inches or a 4:1 height-to-width ratio get larger gaps

The bottom of the shade addressed on its own: hembar position, sill depth and light bouncing off the sill

Fabric named honestly as room darkening or blackout on the order, because the two aren't the same thing

Seam construction checked on any fabric going into a room that has to be dark, so needle holes don't become pinholes of light

Wall and ceiling color discussed, since a bright white room bounces whatever daylight does get past the shade

Cordless or motorized lift specified in nurseries and kids' rooms, to ANSI/WCMA A100.1-2022

Layering planned where one product can't finish the job, such as a blackout roller under lined panels

Channels fastened plumb down both sides, since a bowed track opens a gap of its own

The finished shade run through full travel and looked at with the room lights off, in daylight, before we leave

Pricing

What Blackout Shades Cost in Fishers

National figures put stock shades at roughly $60 to $600 per window and custom-fabricated shades at roughly $250 to $2,600 per window. Those are national ranges for a category and not a quote for a bedroom in Fishers. Blackout has a wrinkle the other categories don't: the fabric is rarely the expensive part. Getting a room actually dark means an outside mount with real overlap, side channels down both sides and a pocket or closed cassette at the top, and that hardware can cost as much as the shade it surrounds. A bare blackout roller is cheap and it will disappoint you. Fishers Window Treatments prices the whole assembly for Hamilton County rooms, because pricing the fabric alone is how customers end up unhappy.

By Product

How Blackout Shades Differ by Product

Every product in this trade behaves differently in a room. Here is what that means for this work.

Blackout roller shade: A dense coated fabric on a tube, the workhorse of this category. The cloth itself passes essentially no light. Everything about whether the room goes dark comes down to what you put around the edges of it, not the fabric you picked.

Blackout cellular shade: A honeycomb with a blackout layer inside the cells, which adds an insulating air pocket the roller doesn't have. It's the better choice on a cold bedroom window in January, and it pairs with side tracks the same way a roller does.

Side channels: Aluminum or vinyl tracks running down both sides that capture the fabric edge. This is the single component that turns a dark shade into a dark room. They're visible, they add width to the outside of the opening, and they need a flat mounting surface.

Light-blocking pocket: A three-sided box mounted above the shade that closes off the top and the upper corners. Light comes over a roller as easily as around it, and a pocket is what shuts that path without relying on the fabric wrapping the tube.

Closed cassette: A headrail enclosing the roller on all sides with a fabric slot at the bottom. It handles the top gap the way a pocket does while looking like finished hardware rather than a built element, and it suits a wall with no depth above.

Outside mount with overlap: Mounting past the trim on all four sides, so the fabric covers more than the opening. The cheapest real improvement in this category. Two or three inches of overlap per side does more for darkness than upgrading the fabric ever will.

Room darkening fabric: A fabric that cuts most light without being opaque, usually with a soft glow through the cloth. It's enough for a guest room or a den, it costs less, and calling it blackout is the most common mislabeling in this trade.

Dual shade on one bracket: A solar screen and a blackout shade on a single bracket set, operated separately. You keep the view and glare control during the day and drop the blackout at night, which is how a bedroom that's also a sitting room gets solved.

Motorized blackout: A motor lets a channeled shade run its full travel without anyone fighting a track, and it puts a dark room on a schedule. On battery, expect to change or recharge roughly once a year, which is the cost nobody mentions at the sale.

Blackout lined drapery over a shade: Panels handle the softness and the sides while the shade handles the glass. The combination reaches a level of darkness neither one gets to alone, and it's often the better-looking answer in a primary bedroom.

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 Fishers 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

Blackout Shades FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Fishers homeowners considering blackout shades.

Because it's inside mounted, almost certainly, and that's geometry rather than a fault. A shade has to be narrower than the opening to roll or stack without binding, so there's a gap down each side. Lutron publishes three quarters of an inch per side on its Roller 20 and 64 systems and thirteen sixteenths on the bigger tubes, against a factory deduction of one sixteenth per side. The fabric is doing its job. The edges aren't covered by anything. To get rid of the gap you have to cover it: overlap the opening on an outside mount, run side channels, or build a pocket at the head.
Covering every light path rather than buying a better fabric. There are usually four in a Fishers bedroom. The sides of the shade, which side channels or an outside mount with overlap will close. The top, where light comes over the roll or the stack, which a light blocking pocket or a deep valance handles. The bottom, where a hembar sits off the sill. And anything else in the room, which in this city very often means an uncovered half round transom over the window, a detail near standard on the 1995 to 2010 production elevations here.
For a nursery, a night worker's bedroom or a serious media room, yes. They're aluminum tracks running down each side of the shade that the fabric edge runs inside, so there's no side gap at all. They read technical rather than decorative, they add to the price, and they mean the shade can't be casually removed. What they buy is the difference between a dim room and a dark one. In a Fishers lower level, which 52.8% of houses here have the floor area to finish, side channels plus a blackout roller is the standard media room answer.
In this housing stock, usually not, and it's worth seeing before you rule it out. A great many Fishers openings, particularly in the 1980 to 1999 third of the city, are finished with drywall returns and no applied casing at all, which means there's flat wall right up to the opening and an outside mounted shade sits cleanly on it. Where there's applied casing, we mount above and outside the casing so the shade overlaps everything. It reads as a deliberate treatment rather than an oversized one, and it gets the room dark.
They solve slightly different problems. A blackout cellular adds trapped air and therefore thermal performance, which matters in a Zone 5A January where the average low is 20.9F, and it stacks tighter at the head. A blackout roller gives a flatter face, fits side channels more precisely, and looks cleaner in a modern room. For a Fishers nursery on an exterior wall, the cellular usually wins on comfort. For a lower level media room where the wall is below grade and thermal performance is irrelevant, the roller usually wins.
It helps some, and less than a cellular shade does, which is worth saying because people assume dark equals insulating. A blackout roller is a single layer of coated fabric with no trapped air, so its thermal contribution is modest. A blackout cellular has the same cell structure as any other cellular, so it carries the same measured performance DOE and ORNL found: up to 20 percent of heating energy and up to 15 percent of total heating and cooling energy against a bare window. If comfort matters as much as darkness, that's the version to buy.
Yes, and in a Fishers primary bedroom it's often the better answer. A blackout lined drapery panel on a rod mounted well above and well outside the opening covers all four edges by design, because a panel is wider and longer than what it's covering. It also does something no shade does, which is absorb sound and soften a room with hard floors and high ceilings. The trade off is that panels have to be drawn and stacked every day, they take wall space when open, and they cost more than a shade of the same size.
It does, and the manufacturers publish it. Shades 120 inches and taller, or with a height to width ratio of 4 to 1 or greater, get larger light gaps than shorter shades of the same product, because a longer roll needs more clearance to track without touching the sides. Fishers has an unusual number of shades in that category, since 73.8% of houses here run two stories or more and the tall foyer and great room openings come with them. If one of those has to be dark, plan on side channels rather than hoping.
Because the fabric was never the problem. A blackout cloth passes essentially no light through itself, which is the easy part. What leaks is the perimeter. An inside-mounted shade has to be narrower than the opening to move at all, so there's a gap down each side, plus a path over the top of the roller and a gap at the bottom where the hembar sits off the sill. Nothing about the fabric grade changes that geometry. Only the mount and the hardware around it do.
Room darkening fabric cuts most of the light but still glows softly when the sun hits it. Blackout fabric is opaque, and you can hold it to a lamp and see nothing. The difference matters because the words get used interchangeably in advertising and they aren't interchangeable at all. For a guest room or a den, room darkening is usually plenty and it costs less. For a nursery at 6am in June, room darkening will not do what you're hoping.
Not on its own. Lutron publishes an inside-mount light gap of 3/4 inch per side on Roller 20/64, plus a standard factory deduction of 1/16 inch per side, and every manufacturer has a version of the same numbers. That gap is what lets the shade travel without dragging. You can close it with side channels fastened inside the opening, and that combination does work. An inside mount with no channels, in a bedroom, is going to leave two vertical stripes of daylight on your wall.
They're tracks, usually aluminum, that run the height of the window on both sides and capture the edge of the fabric so light can't get past. Visually they read as two slim vertical pieces of hardware, and they come in finishes that can match a headrail or blend with trim. They add width outside the opening on an outside mount, and they need a flat, solid surface to fasten to. In a room that has to be dark, they earn their appearance.
It's a three-sided enclosure mounted above the shade that closes off the top and both upper corners. People concentrate on the sides and forget that a roller shade has an open path over the tube, where daylight comes down behind the fabric and lands on the wall. A pocket or a fully closed cassette shuts that path. Combined with channels down the sides and an overlapping outside mount, that's the assembly that actually produces a dark room in Fishers.
More than the default. Mounting past the trim on all four sides is the cheapest real improvement available in this category, and a couple of inches per side does more for darkness than moving up a fabric grade. Above the opening you want enough height for the roller and the pocket. Below, the shade should run past the sill rather than stopping at it. We dimension the overlap at the measure and write it on the order rather than leaving it to a factory standard.
Yes, and it surprises people. A hembar hangs a fraction off the sill so it can move, and low morning sun coming in at an angle finds that gap and reflects off the sill into the room. It's a smaller leak than the sides but it's real. Running the shade past the sill on an outside mount handles it. A bottom channel or a hembar seal handles it in the rooms where nothing less will do. We check it standing in the room, not on paper.
Cordless or motorized, always, since ANSI/WCMA A100.1-2022 is the safety standard this trade builds to and non-compliant inner cords are a substantial product hazard under 16 CFR 1120.3. For darkness, a blackout cellular or roller mounted outside the opening with generous overlap, side channels down both sides and a pocket at the top. And a conversation about the wall color, because a white ceiling will happily bounce whatever daylight finds a way in and undo half of what you paid for.
The full assembly, and layering on top of it. Shift sleep means the sun is at its strongest while you're trying to be unconscious, which is the hardest version of this problem. We'd specify a blackout shade mounted outside the opening with channels and a top pocket, then blackout lined panels over it to catch anything at the perimeter and to soften the room. It's also worth checking the door: a bright hallway under a bedroom door defeats a perfect window every time.
It helps, and a blackout cellular helps more. Stopping direct sun at the glass keeps that energy from landing on your floor and furniture, which is real on a west-facing bedroom in July when the average high around here sits at 85.2F. A cellular adds a trapped air pocket on top of that. What we won't tell you is that a shade cools a room the way a mechanical system does. It reduces the load on a hot afternoon. It doesn't replace anything.
A little, and less than the marketing suggests. A dense fabric plus a cellular air pocket takes some edge off high-frequency sound, so traffic hiss softens slightly. Low-frequency noise walks straight through. If noise is the actual complaint, layering blackout lined drapery over the shade does noticeably more than the shade alone, because you've added mass and a soft surface across a big area. We'd rather set that expectation than sell a shade on a promise it can't keep.
Yes, with two fabrics. A dual shade puts a solar screen and a blackout shade on one bracket set, each operating on its own. Through the day you run the screen, which cuts glare and heat while keeping the view. At night the blackout comes down. It costs more than a single shade and it takes more depth at the opening, so we check mounting depth carefully. In a bedroom that doubles as a sitting room, it's usually worth it.
It does, more than most people expect. Any daylight that gets past the shade lands somewhere, and a white ceiling and pale walls bounce it around the room until the whole space reads bright. The same leak in a room with deep walls barely registers. We're not going to tell you to repaint a nursery. But if you're choosing paint anyway and darkness is the goal, going darker on the ceiling does measurable work for free.
The fabric can be, and the shade can't be, and that's worth understanding before you order. Top-down bottom-up needs a movable middle rail, and that rail has to run in the same channels as everything else, which means a horizontal line where light gets through. In a bedroom that needs actual darkness, a fixed-top blackout shade is the right product and the top-down feature belongs on a different window in the house.
Areas We Serve

Blackout Shades Across Fishers

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

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