How Solar Screen Shades Work

Solar Screen Shades Block the Sun, but Not the View!

Solar screen fabric is available in a wide variety of colors, styles, and openness factors to meet almost any criteria. These fabrics fall into three categories; dark fabrics, light fabrics, and high performance reflective fabrics, all of which provide:

Glare Control
Heat Control
Natural Light Management
View through connection to outside
Manage Light
UV Protection

High performance solar shades

High performance solar screen fabrics are designed to outperform light and dark fabrics when a project requires excellent heat control, glare control, UV protection and view through characteristics. High performance fabrics like SilverScreen and EnviroScreen have a highly reflective exterior regardless of the room-side color. Metallized high performance fabrics are able to provide low visible light transmittance (VLT) values in combination with low shading coefficient (SC) values, independent of color. Typical light and dark colored solar screen provide a dedicated solution where one or two criteria are required or deemed the most important.

For excellent view through and glare reduction select dark colored fabric
For excellent heat management select a light colored fabric
For view, glare control, heat reduction select high performance fabric

Dark-colored solar shades

Dark fabrics provide excellent glare control by reducing the visible light that comes through the fabric. Fabrics that block 94%-96% of the visible light provide excellent glare control characteristics, and will absorb some heat and keep it at the window until it dissipates into the room. In applications where passive solar warming and glare control are desired, dark colored solar screen fabrics are optimal.

Higher AS (Solar Absorptance) values mean more light and heat is absorbed,
Lower VLT (Visible Light Transmission) values mean less light passes through the fabric, resulting in excellent glare control