Light Filtering Cellular Shades & Blinds

What it does not do is make a room dark, and it does not give privacy after sunset. Once your lamps are on, the room becomes the brighter side and shapes are visible from outside. That is true of every light filtering fabric at every cell size, and no amount of layering the honeycomb changes it. If you need darkness or night privacy, a blackout cellular shade is the right product and we would rather say so now.

For a window used during the day – a living room, a kitchen, an office, a landing – this is usually the fabric people actually want. The room stays bright, nobody outside can see in while it matters, and you are not flicking a shade up and down all day to get light back.

Why the Honeycomb Still Matters

This is the part that separates a light filtering cellular shade from any other light filtering shade, and it is the reason to pick one.

A flat fabric shade in a light filtering weave does one job: it diffuses the light. A cellular shade does that and insulates at the same time, because the pleats are joined into sealed cells that hold a pocket of still air against the glass. You are not choosing between daylight and thermal performance. You get both from the same shade.

The US Department of Energy puts cellular savings at up to 20 percent of heating energy and around 15 percent of total heating and cooling energy against a bare window. That figure is not reserved for blackout fabric – it comes from the air in the cells, not from the opacity of the cloth. A light filtering honeycomb over a draughty window is doing real work even on a bright afternoon when the shade is barely noticeable.

Choosing the Cell

Two decisions, and they are independent of each other.

Single cell or double cell

A single cell has one row of pockets. A double cell has two rows nested together, so heat crossing the shade meets two air pockets and the fabric layers between them instead of one.

Single cell suits a standard window in a reasonably well-insulated wall, and it is the lighter, slimmer and less expensive build. Go double cell where the window is the weak point: single-pane glass, older aluminium frames, a north-facing wall that never warms, or a large expanse of glass where the losses add up. Double cell also damps sound noticeably better, which matters on a street-facing room.

Cell size

We build three, and the size changes proportion more than performance.

1. 3/8 inch is the smallest and the most economical, with the tightest stack and the finest horizontal lines. It suits small and average windows, and it is available in the widest colour choice in the range.
2. 7/16 inch is our double-cell size, and it handles the largest openings here.
3. 9/16 inch is the largest single cell we make. The pleat lines read bolder across a big window, which flatters tall glass and larger rooms where a fine 3/8 inch pleat would disappear.

Colour choice runs from six to fifteen shades depending on the build. Order free samples before deciding, because a translucent fabric is the hardest kind to judge on a screen – what matters is how it looks with sun behind it, not how the swatch looks flat.

Lift and Control

Cordless is the standard across this range. You raise the shade by the bottom rail and it holds where you leave it, with no looped cord anywhere on the window, which is what a home with children or pets needs. On most of these shades it is not an upgrade to select – it is simply how the shade is built.

Two of them also come as top-down/bottom-up shades, with a second moving rail. Drop the top for daylight and a view of the sky while the bottom stays shut at eye level. That combination is particularly good with a light filtering fabric, because the closed portion still glows rather than going flat and dark.

Our 7/16 inch double cell is the one with a real control choice, adding a continuous cord loop and a clutch-operated top-down/bottom-up alongside the cordless versions. A cord loop earns its place on a tall or heavy panel, where you would otherwise be reaching the bottom rail above shoulder height.

Where They Work Best

• Living and dining rooms: the core case. Daylight without glare, privacy while the room is in use, and insulation on the coldest wall in the house.
• Kitchens and breakfast rooms: bright working light with the neighbours' view cut off, and a shade that is not fighting you every morning.
• Home offices: diffused light rather than a hard beam across a screen, which is the actual cause of most screen glare.
• Landings, stairwells and hallways: windows nobody wants to operate daily, where a shade can stay down and still light the space.
• Street-facing rooms: daytime privacy at ground level, with double cell if traffic noise is also part of the problem.

Where they are the wrong call is any room somebody sleeps in past sunrise. A bedroom or nursery wants blackout fabric and an outside mount, not a lighter honeycomb.

Measuring, Mounting and Care

Measure the opening with a steel tape in three places for width and three for height, then work from the narrowest width and the longest height. Measure the window itself, not an existing shade. Give us the raw opening figure and we take the deduction. Our measuring guide covers inside and outside mounts.

Inside-mount depth runs from about 1 3/16 inches on the 3/8 inch shades up to 1 7/8 inches on the 9/16 inch, with a little more needed for a fully recessed fit, so check the figure for the build you are configuring. An outside mount has no depth requirement at all.

For care, vacuum on low suction with a brush attachment, running along the pleats rather than across them. The dust that actually shows on a honeycomb is inside the cells rather than on the face, and a cloth cannot reach it – a hair dryer on the cool setting or a short burst of compressed air through the cells clears it. Spot-clean with a barely damp cloth and mild soap, and never soak a cellular panel: water wicks along the inside of the cells and dries with a visible tide line.

Every shade is built to your measurements, so production runs about five to seven business days and shipping is free within the continental United States. You can add the MeasureSafe™ Guarantee at checkout: measure wrong and we remake the shade.