Custom Window Treatments in Solon

Solon is about 35 miles north-east of our Akron workroom, roughly thirty-five minutes. Roller shades, day-night blackout shades, motorized shades, custom drapery and painted wood cornices, cut and sewn on Frank Blvd and installed by our own crew.

Getting to you from the workroom

Solon is about 35 miles from 50 Frank Blvd, Akron, OH 44313 — roughly a 35-minute drive north-east, traffic allowing. Cuyahoga County. There is one workroom and a designer who drives; nothing about your job is handed to a territory owner or a subcontractor.

A New England plan, and then a deliberate slowdown

Solon was settled in 1820 by families from Connecticut — the merchant Isaac “Samuel” Bull and the sea captain Jason Robbins — who took land on either side of what is now Aurora Road and laid the township out in the traditional New England pattern, with a public square at the centre.

What shaped the housing you actually see, though, is much more recent and much more deliberate. Solon grew hard through the second half of the twentieth century, and in 1987 and again in 1994 its voters passed increased lot-size requirements specifically to slow residential growth — aiming at a population ceiling of roughly 25,000 to 26,000 rather than the 40,000 the previous zoning would have allowed.

Why a lot-size ordinance shows up at the window

Bigger lots mean bigger houses set further back, with more glass and more of it facing open ground rather than a neighbour's wall. Which changes the brief: privacy matters less than it does on a tight street, and glare, solar gain and fade matter more. A solar screen that keeps the view is usually a better answer here than a translucent fabric that buys privacy nobody needs. Openness, and what it trades away.

It also means two-storey great-room glass and long runs of rear-facing windows are common, and both are cases where operating shades by hand means nobody operates them. Motorized shades and scheduled runs.

Big glass, and what usually goes wrong with it

The failure we see most often on a house like this is not a bad shade — it is one shade doing a job that needs two. A single solar screen across a wall of rear glass is exactly right at four in the afternoon and exactly wrong at nine at night, when the room is lit and the garden is dark and the screen you chose for its view is showing the room to it. A blackout roll behind the screen, on the same bracket, is the fix, and it is far cheaper to specify at the start than to add a second treatment to later. Two rolls on one bracket.

A note on approvals

Solon's Planning Commission handles site-plan review, zone changes and general planning recommendations. For an ordinary Solon house, interior window treatments are not something anyone reviews. If your property carries a designation, tell us and we will work around it.

What a custom shade actually changes here

The same three things, wherever the house is. It fits the opening you have rather than the nearest stocked width, which is what decides how much light comes past the edges. The opacity is chosen against the orientation of the room rather than off a chart — a west-facing room and a north-facing one want different cloth. And the header is chosen for what the room needs at the top of the window, which is the part that decides whether a bedroom actually goes dark.

All three are decided in the room, at the window, with the tape out. That is why we drive to Solon rather than sell from a counter, and it is the whole reason the consultation is a visit rather than a phone call.

What we make for Solon homes

Book a consultation in Solon

Thirty-five minutes up 271, and worth the drive for a house full of glass. A designer comes to you with fabric, measures every opening, designs the treatment with you and writes the quote before leaving. There is no charge and no obligation.