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May 225 min read

What Is The Best Way To Shade My Home From The Sun?

My Austin Texas Home Stays Hot, How Do I Get And Keep It Cooler?

The answer is to shade your windows with solar screens for windows. To get the sun off of the glass of your windows.

To keep your home cool, you absolutely have to keep the sun off of the windows.

Solar screens for windows are the number one way to keep the sun off the glass.

Solar Screens for windows
Shade Tree in front of the windows
Awning over the top of the windows
Tall shrubs in front of the windows

Interior shade, blinds, shutters, curtains and window film will do nothing for keeping the rooms cooler from the sun that bakes the windows.

At the very least you should put the solar screens on the West facing windows. My suggestion is to put them on all the windows of your Austin Texas home.

Ask the City of Austin, Austin Energy, or any Austin Air Conditioning specialist, they will tell you with certainty that solar screens are the number one way to address heat from the sun getting into your home.

Putting Solar Screens On All The Windows Verses Just Some Will Look Considerably Better.

Your home will look complete and finished verses incomplete and spotty.
For a finished and even look, -consistency is the key.
Pricing gets discounted putting more solar screens up than not.

This install looks beautiful, the Austin TX customer installed solar screens on all of her front windows.

Every window on this home received a solar screen. To include that back door shown here.

The front of this home has a lot of missing solar screens. The homeowner only wanted the solar screens for these 4 windows. This looks sooooo incomplete to me.

This homeowner had me install just three solar screens on the front of their home. They should have done the remaining 4. It just looks odd and unfinished to me left like this.

You Can See Through The Solar Screens Very Well And They Will Not Make The Home Too Dark.

You will be able to open your blinds with the solar screens on
With the blinds open you will get MUCH more light into the home verses now when you have the blinds closed.
With the blinds open, the home will not feel closed off on the inside.
The solar screens will not make it dark inside the home. On the inside of the home it will fill like it’s a cloudy day, but not dark.
You will get plenty of shade, but not cut out all the light.

Showing how well 90% solar screens provide interior shade.

This is a 90% solar screen sliding door partially open. Look at the floor, to the right you have 100% shade, then to left of that you have 0% shade, and then 90% shade. To the far left is 2 layers of 90% shade

West facing window shaded with a 90% solar screen. That’s a lot of sun light coming through. 90% shaded, but a lot of actual light. 90% of the sun’s rays have been blocked.

90% solar screen in the middle. No solar screens on either side of it.

Privacy, People Can Not See In Through The Solar Screens, But You Can Clearly See Out Of Them.

You get great daytime privacy with both the 80% and 90% solar screens.
The 90% solar screens give you the best privacy, but they do have a thicker more solid, denser look.
If you want more transparency to see things like blinds and grid patterns within the windows, the 80% fabric will be a better fit for you.

Here’s a Mocha Brown 90% solar screen next to an 80% solar screen showing how private they make the windows.

Showing an 80% and 90% solar screen next to each other.

How Does The Heat From The Sun Get In Through Your Windows?

Heat that is getting in through the glass of your windows is doing so because the sun’s rays heat up the glass/windows and anything beyond the glass.

There’s nothing blocking the sun’s rays.

The sun’s rays will make the glass hot, which will radiate into the home. Anything the sun’s rays come in contact with will get hot. Just because the glass for your windows is clear, that does not mean the glass is not impacted from the sun’s rays. That clear glass get’s REALLY hot from the pounding of the sun’s rays. And also, if your blinds are closed, the blinds will get hot. The shutters will get hot. Everything the sun comes in contact with will get hot. If your blinds are open, anything else like flooring that are sun stricken will get hot.

Hot glass and windows is like having CONSTANT heaters turned on everywhere throughout the house where there is sun exposed glass.

Non shaded glass allows the sun to penetrate through it.

The answer is it put a shade tree between the windows and the sun. That shade tree will provide shade for the glass. Shade trees take a long time to grow and develop so alternatively, we use solar window screens. Plus you most likely can’t practically have shade trees shading every window of your home.

Why Shade The Home’s Windows With Solar Window Screens?

The solar window screens will drastically shade the glass by using either the 80% or 90% sun shade screen densities.

The glass will no longer get scorching hot from the sun, therefore the heat from those scorching hot windows will no longer radiate into the home.

Solar screens will shade the glass from the sun’s rays. You can either let 10% or 20% of the sun’s rays get through using solar screens for the windows.

It’s common sense that if you shade the window from outside of the home, that the sun’s rays will no longer heat up the glass or get into the home.

Does Window Film And Tint Do The Same Thing As The Solar Screens?

Don’t buy into this fantasy that window film or window tint will do the same thing.

Window film and tint simply will shade the interior, but will still allow the sun to heat up the glass.

Window film installs on the inside of the glass, which does nothing to keep the glass/window from getting hot.

Window tint does not keep the glass and window from getting hot. And WILL NOT keep the heat from warm/hot windows from radiating into the home.

In fact, window tint will actually make the glass hotter, much hotter, because most of the sun’s rays are getting stopped there, on the glass. Window film installers all know this and the honest ones will tell you. It’s common sense if you think it through that if you are stopping the sun’s rays there at the inside pane of the glass, that that inside pane of glass is going to get hot. It doesn’t just get hot, it get’s much hotter because it is that pane of glass with the tint on it that is absorbing all of those sun’s rays.

With solar screens, the glass is shaded first, way before the sun gets to it.

Basic Understanding Of Solar Screens For Windows.

The solar screens sit between the glass and the sun.

Solar screens install between the glass and the sun. Mimicking that of a shade tree.

The solar screens act as a large shade tree between the glass and the sun. You can simulate a full shade tree by using our 90% shade solar screens. Or, a partially full shade tree by using the 80% solar screens. My recommendation is to use the 90% solar screens on West windows that see 4 hours or more of the sun, and the 80% solar screens on all the other windows. I discuss that and much more here at my solar screen questions w/ answers page.

To get a feel for what the installed cost would be to put the solar screens on your home’s windows, visit my Solar Window Screen Pricing page. Installed solar screen pricing is insanely inexpensive. 20 windows will be somewhere around $1,100 all in. That’s cheap for what all goes into each job.

To see many pictures of home’s shaded with the solar screens, take a look at my Solar Window Screen Gallery page. That gallery page is nice, as there’s a wide range of styles and colors of homes on it to take a look at.

Can I Use Your Patio Roller Shades Installed On My Patio To Shade My Windows?

No, the outdoor patio sun shades are just for providing temporary sun shade on the patio. To be used just when you need them.

They are not designed to be a permanent fixture. They are not to be left down all the time.

The wind is way too strong to leave the patio roller shades in the constant down position. If you want to learn more, you can visit my Q&A patio roller shade page.

My patio roller shades are all custom built right here in Austin. My installed Austin TX patio roller shade pricing is exceptional because I make and install them all myself and pass along the savings to you.