Elevate Your New Jersey Home With Outdoor Motorized Shades
Start here to learn everything about outdoor shades.
Last month, we talked about an outdoor amenity that you may not have thought about previously: outdoor motorized shades. We mentioned all the great benefits you can garner from adding this smart feature to your outdoor living spaces. This month, we'd like to take a slightly deeper dive into Screen Innovations’ outdoor shades. We at Bravo AV feel that the company is very aptly named. Screen Innovations is a well-known and regarded name in home theater screens, and in fact, has created innovative screen materials that make it easy to use projectors even in well-lit rooms. The company decided to take their expertise in custom screen materials and light control to an area they felt needed it: partially covered patios and decks. And the results have been amazing, allowing customers to customize their outdoor living spaces in unique ways. Let’s take a closer look at Screen Innovations’ outdoor sun shades, which may trigger novel ideas about what they can do for your patio spaces in Chatham or elsewhere in northern New Jersey.
The Zen Box Shade The Screen Innovations Zen Box is excellent for retrofit applications. The box can be mounted on external walls with minimum modifications. Various shade materials are available depending on your preferences and exposures. The Tough screen, for example, allows for 30% openness to light. The Sheerweave fabric has a less reflective, matte finish. It filters more light, with a 5 to 10% openness factor. The Suntex fabric provides more weather resistance, resisting mildew, and fade. Finally, the Serge Ferrari premium fabrics are also available that provide commercial-quality protection that has been proven in business installations around the world. How do these shades stack up to wind? While they are designed for use in wind conditions under 20 miles per hour, a high-quality stainless steel cable guide keeps them in place in mild conditions. A breezy outdoor meal can be perfectly under control with these shades in place. The maximum size of a Zen Box shade is 18 feet wide by 16 feet tall.
The Zen Roll Shade The Zen Roll is the more custom solution to outdoor sun shading. If you want the ultimate indoor/outdoor space, this is the way to go. The rollers can be installed to virtually disappear into a header. The shades glide down on guides built into walls and columns, so you can create a screened porch when you want it to control insects, wind and sunlight, or open the space up completely to enjoy the best weather. These are available in the same high-quality fabrics and materials as Zen Box. Zen custom shades can go up to 21 feet wide with a maximum height of 16 feet.
Power and Automation Screen Innovations’ Zen motorized outdoor sun shades have flexible power options. Electrification can come from 24-volt DC or even AC power. A wide range of standalone controls exist for raising and lowering shades, and custom presets can be set up for one-button control of a series of shades to a preferred setting. Better yet, we recommend integrating a home automation solution like Savant for sophisticated control options. Screen Innovations makes a gateway that can integrate with various popular home automation systems. With this approach, you can automate your outdoor shades according to schedules, trigger shades to do your bidding according to temperature and light sensors, and coordinate your shades with outdoor lighting and entertainment.
For additional resources, please visit our page on outdoor shades or our pages on window treatments, motorized blinds and Lutron smart shades with articles like this on everything you need to know.
Bravo AV is proud to be an HTA (Home Technology Association) Certified Installation Firm and professional A/V experts. Tom Curnin, the owner of Bravo AV, is a CEDIA Professional Designer, a certified THX Level 1 home theater professional and a member of the Home Acoustic Alliance trained to Level II. You can contact Tom directly at (908) 953-0555 or through email at Tom@BravoAV.com.