Seven Benefits of Installing Honeycomb Shades in Your Maui Home

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Honeycomb shades offer many benefits as a window treatment for any window in your home or office. The unique design of this type of window shade offers privacy, insulation and light control.

All About Honeycomb Shades

Honeycomb shades are also commonly called cellular shades. Both of these names are due to the unique design of this particular type of window treatment. If you look at honeycomb shades that are closed on a window, they simply look like a fabric shade that you can raise and lower to adjust the light. However, if you look at honeycomb shades from the sides you will see that there are channels that run horizontally through the fabric that appear as a bee’s honeycomb or cellular shaped. This specific shape is what makes honeycomb shades so beneficial for any window.

Excellent Insulating Properties

The honeycombs or cells in the shades trap air inside of them in long, open channels. In the summer, it traps the warm air next to your window so that it doesn’t enter the room. In the winter, it does the same thing with the cold air near your windows. This function gives you great insulation for your home. Honeycomb shades can actually double the insulating value of each of your windows. For example, an average double glazed window has an R-value of 3.5. An R-value is the measurement of the resistance of the shade to transfer heat. When you add honeycomb shades to a regular double glazed window, it raises the R-value to 7, making it very energy efficient.

Primo Privacy Properties

Honeycomb shades offer you supreme privacy at your windows. When the shades are closed, you can have complete privacy at your windows. This is versatile of course and depends on the fabric you choose for your shades. Thicker fabrics give you the best privacy or you can choose sheer fabrics for a shade in an area where you want to be able to see filtered light, such as a kitchen.

Another area of versatility is in the design you choose. A honeycomb shade may cover your entire window or only a portion of your window. They are available in bottom up and top down styles. The bottom up style is when you lift the bottom of the shade to raise it and there is open window space at the top that is not covered. This option allows you to let light in the top of the window, but have complete privacy at the bottom of the window. The opposite option is the top down shade. It is installed so that the top of the window is covered by the shade and a portion on the bottom is left uncovered. In this instance, you would open the blind by pushing the top downward.

Ultimate in Light Control

Another great feature of honeycomb shades is that you are in complete control of the light you allow into a room. This is due to the fact that you can choose the exact level of brightness by the type of fabric you choose to have your shades made from. You can choose a sheer fabric to allow quite a bit of light inside the room or you can choose semi-opaque light filtering fabrics even to light blocking opaque fabrics to block out most of the light. Light blocking fabrics are a great idea for a media room so that you don’t have glare on your television or computer screens. It’s also a great choice for children’s rooms and spaces where anyone may take a nap in the daytime.

Child Safety Through Cordless Options

Whether you have children, grandchildren or pets in your home, you want to make certain that your promote safety for all. You can choose the cordless option of honeycomb shades that simply adjusts by lifting the shade up or down depending on the orientation on the window. Since honeycomb shades are lightweight, it’s quite easy to open and close them, unlike heavy wooden blinds. You can rest assure that children and pets will not get tangled in dangling cords with cordless honeycomb shades. You can also choose a cordless honeycomb shade that opens and closes vertically, so your patio doors are safe for everyone also.

A Small Stack

When you open a window treatment, the fabric of a shade or the slats of a blind will stack together. The stack of a honeycomb shade is very small so it doesn’t block your view and you won’t need to hide a large stack by installing a decorative valance on top of it, which is the case very often with blinds.

Make It Fashionable

Honeycomb shades can be very fashionable when you have them custom made with the same fabric on your shades in one room and with custom-made draperies in the same room. You can choose from many colors, styles and fabrics to suit your needs. Some homeowners choose to have a solid color honeycomb shade and add other window treatments to it on the same window to soften the appearance, such as drapes or a valance.

No Vanes to Tilt

Cellular shades do not have vanes or slats to tilt in order to control the light such as blinds do. You can raise or lower them partially to block light from a window though. You can have custom-made honeycomb shades in a variety of shapes including arches, circles, triangles and trapezoids if they stay in a closed position. You can also combine a sheer fabric on the top of a shade with an opaque fabric at the bottom of the shade to preserve your view during the day while creating privacy at night.

Honeycomb shades have many great benefits because they are a real workhorse, they don’t break like the slats on blinds, they are lightweight, easy to operate, are child safe and they last for many years.

Bobby Nakamura

Bobby Nakamura

Third-generation of Naka's legacy, Bobby brings over 30 years of industry experience, a passion for design, and a love for food and travel.

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