Exterior Solar Shades

Exterior Solar Shades in Pittsboro, IN

Heat intercepted outside the glass on open Pittsboro lots

Call (317) 999-5154Get Free Quote
Quick Answer

People considering this product usually want to know how it compares to the alternatives. The answers below make those comparisons directly, including the cases where a different product is the better call.

  • Service: Exterior Solar Shades for Pittsboro homeowners
  • Service area: Pittsboro, IN and surrounding areas
    • For a new order, plan on a measure appointment, then two to five weeks of fabrication, then an install visit. For a broken tilt gear or a dead battery, it's usually a single short visit and no waiting.
  • Insured and bonded
  • Serving Pittsboro, IN since 2008
Exterior Solar Shades Services

Expert Exterior Solar Shades for Pittsboro Homes

Stopping the sun outside the glass is the only way to keep its heat out of the room entirely, and Pittsboro has the exposure to justify it. The canopy here is developer planted and between one and thirty five years old, because almost the whole town went up on former farm ground after 1990 and the ACS records no units at all built in the 1970s or 1980s. There is no mature suburban shade to borrow. Covered front porches on the Craftsman elevations at Whispering Fields Estates and rear patios in the rural subdivisions north and south of town are where an exterior screen changes how a space is used.

Wind is the failure mode and it decides the whole specification. An exterior screen is a sail, so it needs side guides or cables, a rated mounting, and the discipline to retract it when weather arrives. A motorized unit with a wind sensor helps and is not a guarantee. Fabric outdoors also ages faster than the same fabric inside, and while a screen slows fading indoors it does not prevent it, since NFRC attributes only 40 to 60 percent of fading to ultraviolet. One more point: Quail Creek is a condominium, and an association controlling the exterior envelope will want to approve anything you attach outside.

When to Call

Signs You Need Exterior Solar Shades

If you notice any of these in your Pittsboro home, it is worth booking a measure. None of it is urgent, and none of it fixes itself either.

A sliding door takes full afternoon sun

Guests move back indoors ten minutes after sitting down

A screened porch is too bright to watch anything

Sun crosses a pergola with nothing on it

Existing screens flap and tear in wind

Existing exterior mesh has gone chalky and brittle

Wasps and webs have taken over an old screen frame

A three-season room runs hot by noon

The grill corner takes sun from two directions

The patio slab holds heat into the evening

Our Process

How Pittsboro Window Treatments Handles Exterior Solar Shades

Every job follows the same five-step process. Transparent, thorough, and done right the first time.

1

Openness factor chosen outdoors

2

Mesh color decided in daylight

3

Hood and wind sensor set

4

Anchored to structure, fasteners sealed

5

Winter takedown and storage agreed

Real Project Photos

Exterior Solar Shades in Pittsboro

Photographs from real exterior solar shades jobs completed by our crew in Pittsboro and surrounding areas.

Custom shades measured and installed in PittsboroPlantation shutters fitted to a Pittsboro windowCellular shades in a Pittsboro living room
Scope of Work

What Exterior Solar Shades Includes

Every Pittsboro job is documented item by item. Here is what the crew covers.

The sun walked on site at the hour the space actually gets hot, rather than whenever the appointment happens to be

Elevation identified per unit, since a west wall and a south wall want different openness and a different drop

Drop dimensioned from the mounting height down to where you want the mesh to land, at a rail or at the deck

Width run past the opening far enough that low afternoon sun can't come in around the side

Real structure located behind the finish, because an exterior shade anchors to framing or a beam and never to trim

Fastener schedule matched to the substrate, with brick veneer anchored through to the structure behind it

Openness factor chosen against view and heat, 1, 3, 5 or 10 percent, with samples held up outdoors in daylight

Mesh color decided knowing a dark mesh sees out better while a light mesh reflects more and glares more

Guide system specified as zip track or cable, since a free-hanging hembar is where an exterior shade fails

A hood or cassette specified so the rolled mesh isn't sitting out in weather all winter

Wind exposure assessed at that corner of the house, including which direction gusts actually arrive from

A wind sensor specified on any motorized unit that will be left down while nobody is home

Power route planned before the order, with any hardwiring done by a licensed electrical contractor

Battery operation weighed against an Indiana January, since cold shortens what a battery will deliver

Clearances checked for door swing, steps, a grill and anything else living under the shade

Every fastener into the wall sealed properly so nothing we add becomes a path for water

HOA rules on color, projection and visible hardware checked in writing before an order goes in

Travel limits set on install day, the unit cycled fully, and the retract routine shown to whoever will use it

Pricing

What Exterior Solar Shades Cost in Pittsboro

There's no single published national figure for exterior screens, so the honest way to frame it is against two that do exist: motorized shades run about $300 to $1,500 per window installed, and retractable awnings run about $1,000 to $6,000 installed. Exterior solar shades sit between those, and they aren't a quote for anything in Pittsboro. Size drives it first, because these get large. Then the guide system: a shade hanging free with a weighted hembar is the cheap version, and a zip track that captures both edges costs more and is the one that survives a windy season. Motor, hood and the power run finish the number. Pittsboro Window Treatments prices after seeing the structure in Hendricks County, not from a picture.

By Product

How Exterior Solar Shades Differ by Product

Every product in this trade behaves differently in a room. Here is what that means for this work.

1 percent openness mesh: The tightest weave we hang outdoors. It cuts the most heat and glare and gives up the most view, and it makes sense on a west wall where afternoon sun is the entire complaint and looking out is secondary.

3 percent openness mesh: The workhorse specification for a patio or a porch. It holds back a serious amount of solar energy while keeping a usable view outward during daylight, and it's where most projects land once people see samples held up outside.

5 and 10 percent openness mesh: Looser weaves that protect the view first and the heat second. They belong where the outlook matters more than the temperature, or on an elevation that only takes hard sun for an hour or two a day.

Zip track guides: Tracks down both sides hold a welded edge on the mesh so the fabric can't leave the channel. It's the difference between a shade that shrugs off a gusty afternoon and one that flaps, stretches and eventually tears out at the hem.

Cable guides: Stainless cables tensioned top to bottom pass through the hembar and keep it from swinging. Cheaper than zip track and less capable in wind, and a reasonable middle answer on a sheltered porch that doesn't catch much weather.

Hood over the roller: An aluminum cover enclosing the rolled mesh when the shade is up. Out here it's not cosmetic. It keeps sun, rain and grit off the fabric roll and the mechanism through the months the shade isn't being used at all.

Manual gear operation: A crank and gearbox that runs the shade up and down by hand. It's dependable, it needs no power, and its weakness is human: a manual shade only retracts before a storm if somebody is home and thinking about it.

Motor with a wind sensor: The motor runs the shade on a remote and the sensor retracts it automatically once wind crosses a set threshold. On an exterior unit this isn't a luxury feature. It's the thing that saves the shade on the afternoon nobody is watching the sky.

Hardwired power supply: A dedicated circuit or a low-voltage feed run to the motor and installed by a licensed electrical contractor. Outdoors it beats batteries most of the time, since a hardwired motor doesn't care what the temperature did in January.

Post or beam mounting: Where there's no wall, the shade hangs from a beam or between posts on an open patio. The engineering question moves from the fastener to the post itself, and a post that wasn't set for lateral load will tell you about it in a gust.

Light Control

See What Each Fabric Does To The Light

Pick a fabric below and the window updates. It's a drawing rather than a photograph, so read it as a rough guide to what each family does in a Pittsboro room, and to what it doesn't do.

Fabric type

Sheer, 10 percent openness

Ten percent of the weave is open, so you keep the view and most of the daylight. Glare drops a little. After dark, once your lamps are on, someone outside can read shapes through it, which is why this belongs on a view window rather than a bedroom.

Openness factor is printed on the fabric card, so you can compare one line against another before you order anything.

Keeps the viewNot private after dark

Solar, 5 percent openness

The usual pick for a west window or a covered porch. You can still read the yard through it, glare comes down noticeably, and the fabric intercepts a good share of the sun before it reaches you at four in the afternoon.

It also cuts the UV landing on floors and furniture. NFRC puts UV at roughly 40 to 60 percent of fading damage, so this slows fading rather than stopping it.

View and glare controlSlows fading

Solar, 3 percent openness

A tighter weave. The room goes dimmer and the view drops back to an outline. Choose it where the sun is the problem and the view is second, which around here usually means a west wall in July. That's a common call on this side of Indianapolis.

Openness affects how much you see out, not how private you are. A 3 percent fabric still shows silhouettes at night.

View becomes an outlineStrong glare control

Solar, 1 percent openness

Close to a solid fabric with a little view left in it. This is the strongest glare control in the solar family.

The trade is that it darkens the room on a gray January day too. Indianapolis averages a January high near 36F and the light is flat, so think about how the room reads in both seasons before you commit.

Darkest solar optionDim on gray days

Light filtering

No view through it. Daylight comes through the face diffused, so the room stays bright without a hot spot across the television or the kitchen island. This is the default for living spaces.

It isn't private in reverse at night. With the lamps on and the sun down, silhouettes still show.

No view through itBright without the glare

Room darkening

A denser fabric, usually with a liner behind it. Most of the light coming through the face is gone.

Light still arrives around the edges on an inside mount, so a room darkening shade gives you a dim room rather than a dark one. If someone in the house sleeps during the day, say so at the measure and we'll scope it differently.

Dim, not darkEdges stay bright

Blackout

The fabric itself passes essentially no light. What you'll still see is the perimeter. Lutron publishes an inside-mount light gap of about 3/4 inch per side on its Roller 20 and 64 shades, along with a standard factory deduction of 1/16 inch per side, and shades over 120 inches tall or past a 4:1 height-to-width ratio get larger gaps than that.

So if you need a genuinely dark bedroom, that gap has to be dealt with on purpose, either with side channels or by going outside mount. We tell you which one your opening can carry while we're still standing in the room.

Dark facePerimeter needs a plan

Openness factor is a measured fabric spec, so you can compare it line to line. The category names are not measured. One maker's room darkening can behave like another maker's light filtering, which is why the sample books come to the measure and get opened in the room they're going in, at the hour that room has the problem.

Common Questions

Exterior Solar Shades FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Pittsboro homeowners considering exterior solar shades.

Because heat that gets through the glass is already in the room. An interior shade absorbs solar energy and then re radiates part of it inward, so it manages glare superbly and heat only partly. An exterior screen intercepts the energy before it arrives. On a Pittsboro rear elevation facing open mown ground or a bare former farm lot, with July averaging an 85.2 degree high in Indianapolis and a muggy season running 25 May to 22 September, that difference is something you feel on the patio, not just something on a specification sheet.
If it is down and unguided, the fabric flogs, the hembar swings, and the mounting takes loads it was never sized for. That is how these fail. The specification that survives central Indiana has side guides or tensioned cables holding the fabric edges, a hembar with real weight, and a motor with a wind sensor set to retract automatically. Even then the rule is that an exterior screen lives retracted when nobody is using the space. We would rather tell you that at the quote than replace a fabric that spent a night out in April.
In most of the town, no. We found no local preservation commission with certificate authority anywhere in Pittsboro, and with only 47 pre-1940 units here the design review question that dominates older Indiana cities barely exists. We could not confirm either way whether any National Register property sits inside the town, because the county listing table would not load, so we do not state it as settled. The clear exception is Quail Creek, which is a condominium wrapped by golf course, and a condominium association necessarily controls the exterior.
To structure, never to trim alone. Craftsman elevations at Whispering Fields Estates carry broad eaves and a front porch, and the temptation is to hang the cassette off the nearest board. We locate the wood framing behind the finish and anchor into it, sizing the fastener for wind load rather than for the weight of the shade. On a masonry face we anchor into the masonry itself. Where we cannot find sound structure we will say so and propose a freestanding solution instead, because a screen that pulls out in a storm takes part of the wall with it.
Tighter than you would choose indoors, usually 1 to 3 percent, and often a dark color on the outward face. Outside the glass the screen is working against direct beam sun rather than the softer light that has already passed through a window, so a 10 percent weave lets far too much through to change the feel of a porch. The tradeoff is the same one as always: tighter weave, less view. On a Pittsboro rear patio facing open ground with nothing to interrupt the sightline, most clients accept the tighter fabric happily.
Years rather than decades, and how many depends almost entirely on how often it is retracted. Constant direct exposure ages any fabric: color washes out, the weave stiffens, and stitching at the hembar is usually the first thing to go. A screen that spends most of its life rolled up in a cassette can outlast one that lives extended by a wide margin. Pittsboro offers no shelter to help, since the mature trees in this town are limited to the 47 old houses along Main Street. Budget for a fabric replacement well before you budget for hardware.
Because of where the energy stops. Sunlight that reaches the glass is already inside the building envelope, and an interior shade can only absorb it and re-radiate some of it back into the room. An exterior screen intercepts that energy before it ever touches the glass, so the heat never enters. It's the only product in this trade that works on the outside of the window, and on a west-facing Pittsboro patio in July it's the difference between a space you use and one you look at.
It's a trade between view and heat, and there's no free option. A 1 percent mesh blocks the most and shows you the least. A 10 percent keeps your outlook nearly intact and does correspondingly less work on the sun. Most patios land at 3 percent, which holds back a lot of solar energy while leaving a usable view outward during daylight. We bring samples and hold them up outdoors, because a mesh judged indoors under a bulb tells you almost nothing about how it behaves in real sun.
More than the openness number in some ways. A dark mesh absorbs light instead of scattering it, so you see out through it far more clearly and the glare is lower. A light mesh reflects more solar energy away, which helps the temperature, but it scatters light into your eyes and the view through it goes milky. Most people who want to sit out and look at the yard end up on a dark mesh, and accept a slightly warmer number in exchange for actually seeing something.
Structure, and only structure. An exterior screen catches wind across a large area and transfers that load straight into its mounting, so fastening it to trim or to the face of a brick veneer alone is a failure waiting for the right afternoon. We find framing, a header or a beam, and where the wall is masonry we use anchors that reach what's behind the veneer. On an open patio it mounts to posts or a beam, and then the post itself becomes the thing we have to be honest about.
Wind is how exterior shades die, and every decision on the job comes back to it. A free-hanging shade with a weighted hembar will lift, flap and eventually tear at the hem or pull a bracket. A cable-guided shade holds better. A zip track holds the fabric edge in a channel and does best of all. None of them is a storm structure. The other half of the answer is a wind sensor on a motorized unit, since the shade only retracts in time if something is watching when you're not.
On any shade that will spend real time down, yes. The track captures a welded edge on the mesh so the fabric physically cannot leave the channel, which kills the flapping that destroys exterior fabric and takes brackets with it. It also seals the sides, so low sun stops coming in around the edge. On a small, sheltered porch screen that gets used occasionally, cable guides are a reasonable saving. On a west elevation, spend the money.
Down while you're using the space, yes. Down and forgotten for months, no. Exterior fabric handles UV by design, but a shade left extended through every storm of a central Indiana summer is taking loads it wasn't built for, and the mechanism ages faster in weather than it does rolled up in a hood. The practical routine is down through the hot part of the day and up when you go in. A motor with a timer or a sun sensor makes that happen without anyone remembering.
No, and this is where expectations need setting. A solar mesh is a screen with a stated openness, which means it has holes in it on purpose, and rain goes through them. It also isn't pitched to shed water the way an awning is. If you want a dry patio you want an awning or a fixed cover. If you want a cool one, you want this. Plenty of houses end up with an awning on one elevation and screens on another, doing two different jobs.
It isn't. The mesh is woven for solar performance, not for insect exclusion, and even a tight 1 percent weave isn't built or sealed the way an insect screen is. It does cut down what drifts in when it's fully lowered with zip tracks on both sides, which people notice and appreciate, but we're not going to sell it as a bug solution. If mosquitoes are the actual complaint, that's a screening conversation and a different product.
For a motorized unit, yes, one way or another. A hardwired motor needs a circuit, and that work gets done by a licensed electrical contractor rather than by us with a spool of wire. Some units run on a low-voltage supply, which simplifies the run. Battery motors avoid the electrical work entirely and bring their own trade-offs outdoors. Manual gear operation needs no power at all and is still a legitimate answer on a shade you can reach easily.
They work, and they deliver less than they do indoors. Cold reduces what any battery gives you, and an exterior unit sits in whatever January does, with January average lows around 20.9F here. Hunter Douglas puts PowerView battery life at about a year in normal indoor use, and outdoors you should plan on the shorter end of your product's rating. That's why we usually push toward hardwired power on exterior work, even though it means bringing in an electrical contractor.
Not usually, if it has a hood. A hood or cassette encloses the rolled mesh so it sits out of the weather from October to April, which is what that component is for. What we do recommend is a full retraction, a look at the brackets and a clean before the season ends. On an open-roller unit with no cover, taking the fabric off for winter is worth considering, and we'll say so at the measure rather than after the first hard freeze.
Hose it down and let it dry fully before rolling it up. Central Indiana gives you pollen in spring and dust all summer, and both sit in the weave and dull the view long before the fabric itself is worn out. Mild soap and a soft brush handle anything the hose won't. What matters most is the drying: rolling a wet mesh into a hood and leaving it for a week is how mildew starts on fabric that would otherwise have lasted years.
Yes, with the clearances drawn first. We check the door swing, the step below and the head height, then set the mounting so the hembar lands where it won't catch anyone walking through. On a sliding door the usual answer is a zip-tracked screen that runs to the deck, which you raise when you want to pass through. What doesn't work is a shade that has to be dodged, because a shade people duck under gets left up permanently.
Areas We Serve

Exterior Solar Shades Across Pittsboro

We measure and install in every one of these Pittsboro neighborhoods. Each has its own page with the build eras, window conditions and mounting notes for that section.

Related Services

Other Window Treatment Services in Pittsboro

Pittsboro Window Treatments handles the full scope of window treatment work. Explore our other services below.

Faux Wood Blinds in Pittsboro

Composite slats for the wet rooms of a 2004 town

Learn more →

Wood Blinds in Pittsboro

Basswood for the 47 houses that predate 1940

Learn more →

Vertical Blinds in Pittsboro

Built for patio doors in a town of 790 new houses

Learn more →
Free In-Home Measure

Schedule Your Free In-Home Measure in Pittsboro

Contact Information

Reach Us Directly

Our team prioritizes scheduled measures and service calls, and books in-home measures during business hours.

Office
1417 Commerce Avenue, Indianapolis, IN 46201
Hours
Mon-Fri 8a-6p
Service Area
Pittsboro, IN and Surrounding Areas

Ready to Book Your Measure?

Call us to set up an in-home measure, or to ask about a treatment that has stopped working. We will talk it through on the phone first.

Call (317) 999-5154
Service area

Serving Pittsboro and the surrounding area

Call NowGet Quote