When you bought a home with a sun room, chances are your first thought wasn’t, “What are the best window treatments for sun rooms?” Sun rooms are supposed to be effortlessly beautiful and relaxing as you sip lemonade and read a good book in your favorite lounge chair, bathed with natural light and bird song. They’re not supposed to feel like you’re trapped in a hot car in July.
Yet so often, especially in southeastern North Carolina, sun rooms become sweltering hot in humid spring and summer months and then too cold to enjoy when winter finally decides to arrive! This fluctuation in weather is especially difficult to deal with if you’re on the coast in Topsail Island or Carolina Beach. The good news is, you can still enjoy your sun room with indoor and outdoor window treatments. With the right style choices, you can increase your enjoyment of the room and its aesthetics, instead of feeling like you’re covering up your beloved sun room in distracting window treatments. Here are three of our best window treatments for sun rooms.
- Solar Shades. Solar shades block out excess light and sun, but they don’t block the view from your sun room. They’re roller shades made with a high-tech solar screen fabric whose open weave design comes in a variety of colors, patterns, and weaves to appear more ‘open’ or ‘closed’ and, more importantly, block out solar energy.
- Dark solar shades provide great glare control, so they’re perfect for lazy summer Netflix marathons. They still allow a fair amount of heat inside the room, though.
- Light solar shades provide greater heat control than dark solar shades by reflecting more sun away from the room, though they allow more light inside.
- High performance reflective shades have a silver reflective backing on the outside for the ultimate glare and heat control. For extra-hot sun rooms, these are a godsend.
- Solar shades are made of materials suitable for inside or outside installation, and they’re easy to adjust with clutch rollers or motorized rollers.
- Plantation Shutters. You may not initially think an option as bold as plantation shutters would work inside a sun room, until you see a sun room with plantation shutters done well. Plantation shutters are also fully adaptable — you can open them completely for full light or close them for privacy or to block out the afternoon sun.
- Wood shutters give sunrooms a friendly cottage feel, or antebellum air, depending on your décor, and they’re available in a wide variety of colors and stains.
- Synthetic shutters have the same visual effects, but they’re also water and moisture-resistant, which makes them far more affordable and long-lasting choice if you’re on the coast. However, the color palette for synthetic shutters is more limited than the options for wood shutters.
- Custom Drapes and Curtains. You could also transform your sun room into a conservatory or private reading room with custom-made curtains and drapes. The right fabrics will keep the sun’s light and heat out when your curtains are drawn, and they’ll just as easily open up to a beautiful view when tucked away. We have hundreds of fabric swatches and dozens of styles to choose from.
Regardless of how you choose to protect your sun room from excess sunlight and heat, Strickland’s Home has you covered. Schedule an appointment to come in and take a look at our best window treatments for sun rooms in person. With our help, we promise you’ll be sitting in your sun room sipping lemonade in no time — without the sweltering heat.