Blackout Shades

Blackout Shades in Cicero

Dark rooms need edges closed, not just fabric

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Quick Answer

If you've narrowed things down to this product, these answers should confirm the choice or steer you elsewhere. Either outcome is fine. Ordering the wrong thing in custom sizes is the expensive mistake.

  • Service: Blackout Shades for Cicero homeowners
  • Service area: Cicero, IN and surrounding areas
    • It depends what's broken. Hardware repairs on existing blinds and shades usually come together quickly. Replacing an entire custom product means starting the fabrication clock again, which is two to five weeks in most cases.
  • Insured and bonded
  • Serving Cicero, IN since 2008
Blackout Shades Services

Expert Blackout Shades for Cicero Homes

Cicero's bedrooms sit in the wrong place for sleeping late, and that's a direct result of how lake houses are laid out. On the shoreline plats the main living space and the primary bedroom both go on the water elevation, glazed as heavily as the structure allows, with a deck outside them. Sunset Bay is the pattern in miniature: 16 houses, 12 distinct construction years from 1986 to 2022, 10 of the 16 recorded at two stories, and every one of them oriented at the reservoir. Add a summer sunset over open water with no tree line in the way and you have a room that stays bright long past bedtime.

The thing nobody explains is that blackout fabric is not a blackout room. The cloth itself passes no light. The edges do, because every shade is fabricated narrower than its opening so it can travel: Lutron publishes a factory deduction of 1/16 inch per side and an inside mount light gap of 3/4 inch per side on its Roller 20/64, and shades over 120 inches tall get more. That gap becomes a bright outline at sunrise. Closing it takes side channels, a light blocking pocket at the head, or an outside mount that overlaps the trim by two inches on each side.

When to Call

Signs You Need Blackout Shades

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

June sunrise arrives before six and ends everyone's sleep

Light comes over the top of a roller

Headlights sweep the wall on a bend

Two stripes of daylight sit beside the shade

Blinds close and the room still never goes dark

Morning sun bounces off the sill into the room

Store bought panels leave a bright halo at the top

The shade has creased where the bottom rail sits

Night shift sleep keeps getting cut short

A media room washes out every afternoon

Our Process

How Cicero Window Treatments Handles Blackout Shades

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

1

Room checked dark before leaving

2

Whole room ordered on one dye lot

3

Hembar weight and clearance set

4

Written scope and total price

5

Channel finish matched to trim

Real Project Photos

Blackout Shades in Cicero

Photographs from real blackout shades jobs completed by our crew in Cicero and surrounding areas.

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

What Blackout Shades Includes

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

The actual goal settled first, since a room dark enough to sleep in and a genuinely dark room need different products

Every opening measured and checked on the diagonal, because a shade hanging out of level leaks down one side

Outside light sources logged at the measure: a street lamp, a security light, headlights sweeping a bend

Wall surface above and beside the opening checked for somewhere flat and solid to land channels

Outside mount specified wherever real darkness is the goal, with overlap written in inches on every side

Side channels specified where the room has to be dark and the wall around the opening will take them

A light-blocking pocket or a closed cassette specified at the top so daylight can't come over the roller

Factory deduction disclosed up front, since Lutron publishes 1/16 inch per side and that width has to go somewhere

Inside-mount light gap stated in writing, using Lutron's published 3/4 inch per side on Roller 20/64

Tall or narrow units flagged, because shades past 120 inches or a 4:1 height-to-width ratio get larger gaps

The bottom of the shade addressed on its own: hembar position, sill depth and light bouncing off the sill

Fabric named honestly as room darkening or blackout on the order, because the two aren't the same thing

Seam construction checked on any fabric going into a room that has to be dark, so needle holes don't become pinholes of light

Wall and ceiling color discussed, since a bright white room bounces whatever daylight does get past the shade

Cordless or motorized lift specified in nurseries and kids' rooms, to ANSI/WCMA A100.1-2022

Layering planned where one product can't finish the job, such as a blackout roller under lined panels

Channels fastened plumb down both sides, since a bowed track opens a gap of its own

The finished shade run through full travel and looked at with the room lights off, in daylight, before we leave

Pricing

What Blackout Shades Cost in Cicero

National figures put stock shades at roughly $60 to $600 per window and custom-fabricated shades at roughly $250 to $2,600 per window. Those are national ranges for a category and not a quote for a bedroom in Cicero. Blackout has a wrinkle the other categories don't: the fabric is rarely the expensive part. Getting a room actually dark means an outside mount with real overlap, side channels down both sides and a pocket or closed cassette at the top, and that hardware can cost as much as the shade it surrounds. A bare blackout roller is cheap and it will disappoint you. Cicero Window Treatments prices the whole assembly for Hamilton County rooms, because pricing the fabric alone is how customers end up unhappy.

By Product

How Blackout Shades Differ by Product

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

Blackout roller shade: A dense coated fabric on a tube, the workhorse of this category. The cloth itself passes essentially no light. Everything about whether the room goes dark comes down to what you put around the edges of it, not the fabric you picked.

Blackout cellular shade: A honeycomb with a blackout layer inside the cells, which adds an insulating air pocket the roller doesn't have. It's the better choice on a cold bedroom window in January, and it pairs with side tracks the same way a roller does.

Side channels: Aluminum or vinyl tracks running down both sides that capture the fabric edge. This is the single component that turns a dark shade into a dark room. They're visible, they add width to the outside of the opening, and they need a flat mounting surface.

Light-blocking pocket: A three-sided box mounted above the shade that closes off the top and the upper corners. Light comes over a roller as easily as around it, and a pocket is what shuts that path without relying on the fabric wrapping the tube.

Closed cassette: A headrail enclosing the roller on all sides with a fabric slot at the bottom. It handles the top gap the way a pocket does while looking like finished hardware rather than a built element, and it suits a wall with no depth above.

Outside mount with overlap: Mounting past the trim on all four sides, so the fabric covers more than the opening. The cheapest real improvement in this category. Two or three inches of overlap per side does more for darkness than upgrading the fabric ever will.

Room darkening fabric: A fabric that cuts most light without being opaque, usually with a soft glow through the cloth. It's enough for a guest room or a den, it costs less, and calling it blackout is the most common mislabeling in this trade.

Dual shade on one bracket: A solar screen and a blackout shade on a single bracket set, operated separately. You keep the view and glare control during the day and drop the blackout at night, which is how a bedroom that's also a sitting room gets solved.

Motorized blackout: A motor lets a channeled shade run its full travel without anyone fighting a track, and it puts a dark room on a schedule. On battery, expect to change or recharge roughly once a year, which is the cost nobody mentions at the sale.

Blackout lined drapery over a shade: Panels handle the softness and the sides while the shade handles the glass. The combination reaches a level of darkness neither one gets to alone, and it's often the better-looking answer in a primary bedroom.

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 Cicero 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

Blackout Shades FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Cicero homeowners considering blackout shades.

Because the shade has to be narrower than the opening to move, and the published numbers show how much narrower. Lutron states a factory deduction of 1/16 inch per side and an inside mount light gap of 3/4 inch per side on the Roller 20/64. That's a design fact, not a fault in your shade. Where the room faces open water with nothing to break the low morning sun, that outline is the first thing you see. Side channels capture the fabric edge and a pocket at the head closes the top, and together they get a room genuinely dark.
Usually only the exposed ones, and we'd rather spend your money where it does something. In a Greystone Village bedroom, which is inland with no water frontage and roughly twenty years of planted canopy, a well fitted blackout roller with an outside mount is generally enough. On a water elevation in Morse Overlook or Cicero Shores, where the glass looks at open reservoir with no tree line at all, channels earn their cost. We walk the house at the time of day the problem actually happens rather than deciding it from a plan.
It's a shallow enclosure at the head of the opening that hides the roll and stops light escaping over the top of the shade. It needs depth, which is the catch in this town. 35.2 percent of Cicero's houses predate 1980, with period casing, shallow jamb returns and storm build ups, and in the pre-1950 village stock there's often no usable depth at all. In those houses we build the pocket forward of the opening as a fabric wrapped cornice mounted to the casing, which does the same job and reads as trim rather than as hardware.
It can, and in a room with a lot of hard surfaces it does two jobs at once. A lined and interlined drapery panel on a rod with proper returns to the wall and a center overlap will close the light path around the edges the way a shade can't on its own, and it deadens the echo you get in a modern lake room with big glass and hard floors. What it costs is stack back: the panels park on wall beside the opening, and on a 12 foot door wall you need real wall to park them on. We measure that before we quote.
It helps, and it isn't the product to buy for that reason alone. An opaque fabric intercepts solar gain before it reaches the room, which is worth something in a town where July averages a high near 85.2 degrees. But a single layer blackout roller has no air cell, so it does very little for the January side, where the average low sits near 20.9 degrees. If you want summer control and winter retention out of one opening, a blackout cellular gives you both, or we run a blackout roller with a cellular behind it in a dual system.
Genuinely dark, with two products rather than one. Our usual specification is a blackout roller on side channels with a pocket at the head, plus a lined drapery panel over it that returns to the wall. That combination handles the low sun that comes across open water in the evening and the reflected light that arrives early. It's also the specification where cord safety matters most: ANSI/WCMA A100.1-2022 is the governing product standard, and inner cord non compliance is a substantial product hazard under 16 CFR 1120.3, so everything in that room goes cordless.
Because the fabric was never the problem. A blackout cloth passes essentially no light through itself, which is the easy part. What leaks is the perimeter. An inside-mounted shade has to be narrower than the opening to move at all, so there's a gap down each side, plus a path over the top of the roller and a gap at the bottom where the hembar sits off the sill. Nothing about the fabric grade changes that geometry. Only the mount and the hardware around it do.
Room darkening fabric cuts most of the light but still glows softly when the sun hits it. Blackout fabric is opaque, and you can hold it to a lamp and see nothing. The difference matters because the words get used interchangeably in advertising and they aren't interchangeable at all. For a guest room or a den, room darkening is usually plenty and it costs less. For a nursery at 6am in June, room darkening will not do what you're hoping.
Not on its own. Lutron publishes an inside-mount light gap of 3/4 inch per side on Roller 20/64, plus a standard factory deduction of 1/16 inch per side, and every manufacturer has a version of the same numbers. That gap is what lets the shade travel without dragging. You can close it with side channels fastened inside the opening, and that combination does work. An inside mount with no channels, in a bedroom, is going to leave two vertical stripes of daylight on your wall.
They're tracks, usually aluminum, that run the height of the window on both sides and capture the edge of the fabric so light can't get past. Visually they read as two slim vertical pieces of hardware, and they come in finishes that can match a headrail or blend with trim. They add width outside the opening on an outside mount, and they need a flat, solid surface to fasten to. In a room that has to be dark, they earn their appearance.
It's a three-sided enclosure mounted above the shade that closes off the top and both upper corners. People concentrate on the sides and forget that a roller shade has an open path over the tube, where daylight comes down behind the fabric and lands on the wall. A pocket or a fully closed cassette shuts that path. Combined with channels down the sides and an overlapping outside mount, that's the assembly that actually produces a dark room in Cicero.
More than the default. Mounting past the trim on all four sides is the cheapest real improvement available in this category, and a couple of inches per side does more for darkness than moving up a fabric grade. Above the opening you want enough height for the roller and the pocket. Below, the shade should run past the sill rather than stopping at it. We dimension the overlap at the measure and write it on the order rather than leaving it to a factory standard.
Yes, and it surprises people. A hembar hangs a fraction off the sill so it can move, and low morning sun coming in at an angle finds that gap and reflects off the sill into the room. It's a smaller leak than the sides but it's real. Running the shade past the sill on an outside mount handles it. A bottom channel or a hembar seal handles it in the rooms where nothing less will do. We check it standing in the room, not on paper.
Cordless or motorized, always, since ANSI/WCMA A100.1-2022 is the safety standard this trade builds to and non-compliant inner cords are a substantial product hazard under 16 CFR 1120.3. For darkness, a blackout cellular or roller mounted outside the opening with generous overlap, side channels down both sides and a pocket at the top. And a conversation about the wall color, because a white ceiling will happily bounce whatever daylight finds a way in and undo half of what you paid for.
The full assembly, and layering on top of it. Shift sleep means the sun is at its strongest while you're trying to be unconscious, which is the hardest version of this problem. We'd specify a blackout shade mounted outside the opening with channels and a top pocket, then blackout lined panels over it to catch anything at the perimeter and to soften the room. It's also worth checking the door: a bright hallway under a bedroom door defeats a perfect window every time.
It helps, and a blackout cellular helps more. Stopping direct sun at the glass keeps that energy from landing on your floor and furniture, which is real on a west-facing bedroom in July when the average high around here sits at 85.2F. A cellular adds a trapped air pocket on top of that. What we won't tell you is that a shade cools a room the way a mechanical system does. It reduces the load on a hot afternoon. It doesn't replace anything.
A little, and less than the marketing suggests. A dense fabric plus a cellular air pocket takes some edge off high-frequency sound, so traffic hiss softens slightly. Low-frequency noise walks straight through. If noise is the actual complaint, layering blackout lined drapery over the shade does noticeably more than the shade alone, because you've added mass and a soft surface across a big area. We'd rather set that expectation than sell a shade on a promise it can't keep.
Yes, with two fabrics. A dual shade puts a solar screen and a blackout shade on one bracket set, each operating on its own. Through the day you run the screen, which cuts glare and heat while keeping the view. At night the blackout comes down. It costs more than a single shade and it takes more depth at the opening, so we check mounting depth carefully. In a bedroom that doubles as a sitting room, it's usually worth it.
It does, more than most people expect. Any daylight that gets past the shade lands somewhere, and a white ceiling and pale walls bounce it around the room until the whole space reads bright. The same leak in a room with deep walls barely registers. We're not going to tell you to repaint a nursery. But if you're choosing paint anyway and darkness is the goal, going darker on the ceiling does measurable work for free.
The fabric can be, and the shade can't be, and that's worth understanding before you order. Top-down bottom-up needs a movable middle rail, and that rail has to run in the same channels as everything else, which means a horizontal line where light gets through. In a bedroom that needs actual darkness, a fixed-top blackout shade is the right product and the top-down feature belongs on a different window in the house.
Areas We Serve

Blackout Shades Across Cicero

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

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Contact Information

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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
Cicero, IN and Surrounding Areas

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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) 863-9966
Service area

Serving Cicero and the surrounding area

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