Questions people ask us

No. A designer comes to your home with fabric, measures every opening, designs the treatment with you and gives you a written quote before leaving. There is no charge and no obligation.

About an hour for a few windows, longer for a whole house. It is a working visit rather than a presentation: every opening gets measured, and the treatment is laid out with you in the room it will live in.

The premises on Frank Blvd is a workroom rather than a showroom, and the consultation is designed to come to you — fabric looks different in your own light and against your own walls than it does anywhere else. If you would rather talk before booking a visit, call (330) 864-4190, Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm.

Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm. Closed Saturday and Sunday. A form sent over a weekend gets a call on Monday.

Yes. Fabric comes in on the roll and is cut on our own tables in Akron, drapery is sewn here, and the wood cornices are built here. Our own crew installs. It is the reason we can do a window that is not a standard size, or a dual roller that a catalogue does not offer.

That is most of what we do. A shade ordered from a size chart is rounded to the nearest stocked width and the difference shows up as a gap at the edges. We measure each opening in three places and cut to what is actually there — which matters most on wide spans, patio sliders, and century-old sash that has settled out of square.

You get a real lead time at the quote, once we know what the goods are. It depends on the fabric and the hardware, so it is a number we give you rather than one we print.

Room-darkening cuts most of the light but leaves a glow around the edges. Blackout is the fabric itself blocking essentially all light through the cloth. Neither one makes a room dark on its own, because a roller shade is cut narrower than its opening — the edges are what let light in.

Only if the edges are dealt with. The fabric blocks essentially all the light through it, but a shade mounted inside the opening leaves a gap down each side by design, and an open roll leaves the head open. An outside mount with a generous overlap, side channels, and a cassette or a cornice over the tube are what turn blackout fabric into a dark room.

It is how open the weave is. A lower percentage means a tighter weave: less view out, more UV and glare blocked. The category publishes 1%, 3%, 5% and 10%, with roughly 99% of UV blocked at 1% and about 90% at 10%. We pick it against your actual window rather than from a chart.

It depends which problem you are solving. A light fabric reflects more solar heat back out of the room, but scatters more light inside it, which can make glare on a screen worse. A dark fabric absorbs more heat but cuts glare hard and keeps the view out crisper. If the complaint is “this room is hot”, lean light; if it is “I cannot see my monitor at four o’clock”, lean dark.

No. A banded or zebra shade is one roller carrying a single fabric with alternating sheer and opaque stripes; you align or offset the stripes to change the light. A dual roller is two separate fabrics on two separate rolls, each with its own full drop — which is what makes a genuine blackout layer possible.

On the right windows, clearly: glass you cannot reach, a child’s room where there should be no cord at all, a run of patio doors, and rooms that need the shade down before the afternoon sun arrives. On an ordinary reachable bedroom window, a cordless lift is a complete answer and there is nothing to charge or pair.

Yes. The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s guidance is that the safest option when young children are present is to go cordless, and it is explicit that the alternatives only reduce the hazard rather than eliminate it. The CPSC also recommends moving cribs, beds, furniture and toys away from windows, and says window coverings sold before November 2000 should be replaced.

Sometimes. It depends on the tube diameter, the brackets and how wide and heavy the fabric is, and it is a question we answer by looking rather than over the phone. If they are the right generation it can be a straightforward swap; if not, we will say so.

In most commercial and assembly occupancies, hanging textiles are specified to NFPA 701, the standard method for testing flame propagation of textiles and films. Method 1 covers lighter fabrics including curtains, draperies and roll-type window shades; heavier materials, plastic films and vinyl-coated blackout linings fall under Method 2. The authority having jurisdiction and the project specification govern, so we supply the mill’s test report for the exact fabric with the submittal rather than making a blanket claim.

We would rather not, and on anything of size we will ask to walk the building first. Drawings tell us the openings; the walk tells us the mounting conditions, the access, the interferences and how the install has to be sequenced around people using the building.

Send the site-survey form with the facility, the stage and any bid or spec deadline. We acknowledge within one business day, propose a survey window, walk the building, and come back with an opening-by-opening unit matrix, product data and the mill’s test reports for the exact fabrics.