Shading Your Back Patio With Outdoor Roller Shades.
If your back patio is sun stricken, you can use our outdoor patio roller shades to keep the sun out.
Outdoor patio roller shades are the answer to shading your back patio. They are not the answer to providing constant sun shade for your patio. But they are the answer to providing temporary sun shade when you need it.
Our extensive Outdoor Patio Roller Shade F&Q has a lot of great insight to the shades and is worth visiting to get a feel for them.
Should I Get One Roller Shade Or Shade All The Patio Openings?
You can install just one roller shade, or you can shade each opening of your patio. I prefer to cover all openings, doing so transforms the patio.
This is a personal preference and budget decision obviously.
To get a feel for installed pricing, visit my Outdoor Patio Roller Shades Pricing page.
Let me say this, it is a fantastic feeling to be inside the patio when all the roller shades are dropped down when you have all of the patio openings covered.
This will entirely transform the look and feel for the back patio.
It will feel like you have an additional room added on to your patio.
Do You Want To Fully Cover All The Patio Openings?
When it is blazing hot outside, and you drop the roller shades to block out the sun, the feeling is incredible.
You don’t however want to block out the breeze flow, which is why I will install and drop my patio roller shades to around 24″ from the ground. As shown by these pictures.
This still allows for a mild breeze to pass through, so inside the patio it does not feel stagnant.
It is hot outside during the Summer. Just because you shade the patio, that does nothing for the outdoor ambient temperatures. If it is 100 degrees outside, the patio even shaded will also be 100 degrees. When it is hot like that, you want outdoor air to flow through the patio. You don’t want to trap the air and rely on ceiling fans, as that would just circulate the hot air.
You will want openings down under the solar shades so mild breezes can move the air out of your patio.
All openings for this patio got shaded with the patio roller shades, to include a small one specifically for the walkway opening.
To see more examples, visit the Patio Roller Shades Gallery page.
When you have handrails like this, those handrails will dictate how the roll shades drop. When we install the roll shades, they may have to stop at the hand rail because the handrail like in this picture is keeping the roll shades from going any further down. This IS NOT an issue at all, because the patio is still getting plenty of shade from the sun and is allowing air to flow through the patio under the shades.
Do I Need To Try To Shade All Uneven Openings For My Patio As Well?
Don’t sweat it, cover what you can and enjoy the ample shade you will get. As it WILL BE drastic.
For this gazebo, I did not shade the Triangles to the left there. It’s just not a big deal. The amount of shade you get for that big roller shade is SOOO much that those triangles seem trivial.
That big roll shade there to the left is 16′ wide, however the opening is 18′ wide. Leaving a 12″ gap to either side of it. 16′ width is the widest roll shades we have. This homeowner was worried that the width would be odd because we didn’t have a 18′ to install for them. Once we put this up, they were SOOOO happy and that worry quickly dissipated.
Can We Put Multiple Height Stops For The Outdoor Patio Shades?
In many and most cases the answer is yes.
For the following installation, I installed these to drop all the way down as shown by this picture and about three down as well as an option.
And I also put hooks about mid way down, about three feet down.
He said because the trajectory of the sun, that he did not need the roller shades to drop all the way down. That he preferred to have them drop just enough to give him the sun shade they wanted but still allow for the breeze to flow under them.
This was a large patio, I installed six roller shades for this patio. All openings for the patio were covered. When the shades dropped, the back patio felt like a private room. A comfortable room, and a room that no one from the outside could see into.
See on the ground from this picture the shade? That’s 97% shade. The fabric is 97% dense, so you are getting 97% sun shade.
That’s a lot of sun shade for this patio.
Can I Get The Patio Roller Shades To Provide Shade For My Windows Under The Patio As Well?
If you need shade for the windows under your patio, then you need to use solar window screens.
You can not leave the patio roller shade down all the time to give your windows the sun protection they need. The solar screens for windows are the preferred shading device that lives on the windows that will provide constant shade for the windows.
The solar window screens are made to be in the full sun all the time.
Check out our solar screen Q&A page and Austin Texas solar screen installed pricing page to learn more about that as a preferred window shading option.
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