Do you need to put your sunglasses on to eat breakfast in your kitchen? Is the sun fading your carpet? Do you have difficulty seeing the TV or computer screen? Or do you simply want daytime privacy?
These are all good reasons for installing sunscreen roller blinds (also known as sun filter roller blinds), whether at home or in the office.
Sunscreen fabrics come in a range of openness from 2% to 10%. This measures the percentage of UV which is allowed through, but has the practical effect of giving a more or less open weave. If protecting your artwork or seeing your screen is your main priority, you should consider a 2% or 3% for maximum protection, but if you want to see better to the outside world, a 10% will allow you to do that. Or A 5% sunscreen may be the best choice for you, giving the best of all worlds.
Something which is not intuitively obvious is that you can see out better through a dark sunscreen than a light one, and in fact colour makes more difference to visibility than percentage does: for example, you see out better through a black 3% than a white 10%. The privacy from outside doesn’t change. If you walk into a room with a white or light-coloured sunscreen you will tend to see the blind first and the outside world second (depending on relative light conditions), but if you walk into a room with a dark sunscreen you will tend to see straight through the blind to the view.
A couple of other considerations: if you have a light-coloured sunscreen blind in your window this will make your window look white form the outside, while a dark sunscreen will not be obvious. And if you have an issue with summer heat, you may be better to go lighter as the dark colours will absorb heat.
Sunscreen blinds do not give night-time privacy but can be teamed with a blockout roller blind which can be pulled down at night.
We have a wide range of fabrics available. Most of these can be seen at Uniline or Shaw Blind Fabrics.
