Solar Shades

Solar Shades in Fishers by Fishers Window Treatments

Glare cut, view kept, openness chosen at your window

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Quick Answer

If you've narrowed things down to this product, these answers should confirm the choice or steer you elsewhere. Either outcome is fine. Ordering the wrong thing in custom sizes is the expensive mistake.

  • Service: Solar Shades for Fishers homeowners
  • Service area: Fishers, IN and surrounding areas
    • Honest structure: the measure happens on a normal appointment, the factory takes two to five weeks to build your order, and then we install. Service work on something already hanging moves much faster because nothing needs fabricating.
  • Insured and bonded
  • Serving Fishers, IN since 2008
Solar Shades Services

Expert Solar Shades for Fishers Homes

Solar shades are the product Fishers needs most and understands least. They're an open weave fabric with a stated openness factor, and that single number decides everything: a 1 percent fabric cuts glare hard and gives up most of the view, a 10 percent keeps the view and cuts far less. There's no right answer, only the right answer for a given elevation, and Fishers happens to contain two elevations that couldn't be more different from each other.

The first is inland. Fishers sits on the county's one mile section grid, with Allisonville, Lantern, Olio and Cyntheanne running north to south, so subdivision houses tend to sit near cardinal orientation and a large share of rear elevations face west or south. Only 3.0% of the housing stock predates 1980, so almost none of that glass has a fifty year tree standing in front of it. A 2008 Avalon of Fishers family room facing west at five o'clock in July is taking the sun with nothing between.

The second is the water. Geist Reservoir was created in 1943 and the Fishers shoreline carries a band of subdivisions from about 96th Street north to 113th. A lake elevation gets direct sun plus a reflected component bouncing back off open water, with no tree line and no neighboring structure to break either. That's a different load, and it usually needs a lower openness factor than the same room would need three miles inland. We bring openness cards and hold them against your own view before you choose.

When to Call

Signs You Need Solar 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.

The room is unusable from four o'clock through the summer

You can see a television screen only after the sun has gone

Glare off the reservoir is worse than the direct sun

Floors and furniture have faded in a band across the room

You want the view kept and refuse to cover the window

A blackout shade solved the glare and killed the room

Afternoon heat drives everyone out of the family room

The west wall of glass has never had anything on it

Our Process

How Fishers Window Treatments Handles Solar Shades

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

1

Establish the real exposure

We find out which way the glass actually faces and what's in front of it, then ask what hour the problem starts. West and south are the usual answers in Fishers because of the section line grid, but a Geist lot follows the shoreline rather than the grid, so orientation there varies house to house. Whether anything shades the elevation matters as much as the compass direction does.

2

Show openness against your view

We bring cards at 1, 3, 5 and 10 percent and hold them against your own window at the time of day the room is used. This isn't a formality. The same fabric that reads perfect at noon can be useless at five, and the same 3 percent that feels right inland feels transparent facing open water. You pick standing in the room, looking at what you'll actually be looking at.

3

Say what it can't do

A solar shade cuts glare and reduces the amount of solar energy reaching the room, but by the time you feel heat, it's already through the glass and inside. If heat rather than glare is the complaint, the honest answer is exterior shading, and we'll say so even though it's a different product. We also explain that fade is slowed rather than prevented, because UV is only 40 to 60 percent of the cause.

4

Measure and set the gap

Three widths and three heights per opening, a diagonal for square, and flat depth confirmed at the stop. Then we tell you the light gap in writing. On an open weave fabric the gap matters less than it does on blackout, because the fabric is transmitting light anyway, but the edge of a solar shade is still a bright line at the wrong hour and you should know it's coming.

5

Decide color and side

Fabric color changes behavior more than people expect. A light fabric bounces more light back and keeps the room brighter but reads hazier from inside. A dark fabric absorbs more and gives a much crisper view out, at the cost of more heat held in the fabric itself. On a west elevation with a view worth keeping, dark usually wins. On a north room where the issue is glare rather than view, light usually does.

6

Install and check at hour

We hang it, level it, run the full travel, and where the timing allows, we look at the result at the hour the problem happens rather than the hour we happened to arrive. If the fabric is wrong we would rather find out in the first week. On motorized runs we set travel limits and build a scene, and on a west wall we'll talk through whether a sun sensor or an astronomical timer is worth having.

Real Project Photos

Solar Shades in Fishers

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

Custom shades measured and installed in Fishers
Scope of Work

What Solar Shades Includes

Every Fishers 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 Fishers

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 Fishers. 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. Fishers 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 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

Solar Shades FAQ

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

It depends on the elevation and on how much view you're willing to give up, and nobody can pick it for you from a catalog. As a rough guide, 1 and 3 percent cut glare hard and are what a west facing Fishers family room or a Geist water elevation usually needs. 5 percent is a middle position that keeps a usable view while taking the edge off. 10 percent is mostly for privacy and softening rather than for glare control. We bring cards in all four and hold them against your window at the hour the room is unusable, because that's the only test that means anything.
Because it gets two loads instead of one. The reservoir was created in 1943 and its Fishers shoreline is open water with nothing standing on it, so a lake facing room gets direct sun and then a reflected component coming back up off the surface. Inland Fishers lots get the direct component only, and even in a subdivision with young canopy there's usually a neighboring structure or a fence line breaking part of it. That reflected load is why households on Springs of Cambridge and the Geist plats commonly land on 1 or 3 percent where an Avalon of Fishers house would be happy at 5.
It will reduce the solar energy getting past it, which helps, but it isn't the same as stopping heat. Once sun has passed through the glass, the energy is inside the room and an interior fabric is managing what reaches you rather than what enters. If your complaint is genuinely temperature rather than glare, exterior solar shades or a retractable awning stop the sun on the outside of the glass, which is the only place stopping it does the full job. We would rather send you to the correct product than sell you the convenient one.
No, and it works the other way round, which surprises people every time. A solar shade works by contrast: during the day it's brighter outside than in, so you see out and passers by mostly don't see in. After dark that reverses. With lamps on inside and darkness outside, an open weave fabric gives your neighbors a clear view of the room. On a street facing Fishers window or a ground floor unit in the Nickel Plate District, that means a solar shade alone isn't a privacy answer and you need a second layer for evening.
They do different jobs. A dark fabric absorbs more light and reflects less back into the room, which gives a much crisper view out and cuts glare more effectively, but the fabric itself gets warmer. A light fabric bounces light back toward the glass and keeps the room feeling brighter, but from inside the view reads hazy, like looking through a screen. On a west facing Fishers room where the point is keeping a view you paid for, dark almost always wins. On a north facing room where the issue is diffuse brightness, light is often better.
They slow it, and that's the strongest honest statement available. NFRC guidance puts ultraviolet at roughly 40 to 60 percent of fading damage, with visible light, heat, humidity, the age of the material and dye chemistry making up the rest. A solar shade cuts a large share of the UV and some of the visible light, so a covered floor fades noticeably slower than an uncovered one. It doesn't stop it, and anyone telling you a shade prevents fading is selling. In a Fishers house with a big unshaded west elevation this matters more than average.
Yes, and on a lot of Fishers rooms that's the correct specification rather than a luxury. A common pairing is a solar shade for the day and a drapery panel or a room darkening shade for the evening, because the solar handles glare and view while the second layer handles privacy after dark and sleep in a bedroom. Dual roller systems put both fabrics on one bracket set at the same window, which keeps the head detail tidy. On a tall great room wall, we usually motorize the solar layer and leave the second layer manual.
On a reachable window, only if you want it. On the tall glass this city is full of, effectively yes. 73.8% of Fishers houses run two stories or more, and a solar shade on an upper great room window that nobody can reach will end up permanently down or permanently up, which wastes what you bought. Motorized lift with a scene lets the shade come down for the four hours that matter and go back up afterwards. A sun sensor or an astronomical timer can automate it, and on a west wall that's where the product finally does its job unattended.
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 Fishers 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 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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