Window Treatment Brightens Outlook

It’s one of nature’s crueler jokes that there is only one way to be properly awakened in the morning. It involves gently whispered endearments, the rustle of satin and a giggling reminder that you hit the lottery the night before and are now on perpetual vacation.

The rest of us, however, start the new day with the metallic brack of the clock radio, dragon breath, fresh memories of surreal and embarrassing dreams and groggy reminders that we’re running late for work.

All that is grotesque enough, of course, but if you add the final indignity of blazing shafts of sunlight arrowing through the windows and straight into your desperately squinting eyes, then you’ll be persuaded that a few thousand years in purgatory will be a snap.

It all depends on which way your house faces and, to a lesser degree, what time of year it is. In midsummer, a window with western exposure can act like a magnifying glass, transmitting high heat and bright light during the hottest and brightest part of the day. And from about now through December, the bright morning sun can slant aggressively through windows with a southern exposure and possibly ruin your day before it starts.

There’s a bit of a dilemma here. You may not want to put up opaque drapes and turn your home into a cave, but you also don’t want to wake up to nature’s own continuous flash cube. And you don’t want that sunlight to wreak havoc on your furnishings, fading fabrics, wood and carpet.

Fortunately, there are several solutions. Depending on the window covering or treatment, you can let in enough light to flood the house--without the heat or damaging rays--or you can approximate the atmosphere of a mushroom farm.

One of the most common and successful light control techniques is to use sheer drapes, said Jason Titus, owner of Jason Titus Interiors in Irvine. Using a sheer drape behind a second, decorative drape, Titus said, will cut a good amount of light on its own. If you want to cut the light even further, “you can put a separate liner underneath sheers and still have light transference. You can actually have three layers of fabric that do various things,” he said.

Pleated shades also “do a good job of insulating and cutting out glare and still transmitting light,” said Titus, and vertical louvers offer good light management while still allowing a view to the outside, depending on which way the louvers are tilted. Another advantage of louvers, Titus said, is that they can be progressively tilted during the course of the day as the sun moves.

Similar in effect to vertical louvers are common Venetian blinds or mini-blinds. These, too, can be tilted to direct the light up or down--away from your eyes, but in such a way that the room is still well-lighted.

One of the newest window treatments, Titus said, is sold under the name Silhouette. “It rolls down like a window shade and then it tilts,” he said. “It’s two layers of fabric with fabric blades in between, sort of like a Venetian blind wedged between two pieces of sheer. It’s quite dressy looking.”

The Silhouettes are among the most expensive window treatments, Titus said, comparable to layers of drapery. Pleated shades are less expensive, and vertical louvers and Venetian and mini-blinds are the cheapest.

For truly blinding sun, there is a more scientific option: window film. Sold by the square foot (at approximately $2 to $2.50 per square foot), these films are applied directly to the glass and act in much the same way as the lenses in polarizing sunglasses do.

Depending on the deepness of the shade of the film, as much as 60% of damaging light and heat can be eliminated without the view through the glass being obstructed, said Brian Freeborn, an independent sales representative from Huntington Beach who deals in fabric protection and cleaning, as well as window treatments.

The key to the films, Freeborn said, is their ability to reduce the transmission of ultraviolet rays. This is especially useful, he added, in houses near water; water reflects and intensifies light.

What to do while you’re waiting for your window treatment to arrive, while your windows are bare? A Toluca Lake-based company, Sashades, makes a temporary window covering, a soft white linen-like synthetic material that can be applied directly to the glass with double-sided tape. The material is translucent but not transparent, and it effectively blocks excessive light and heat until you’re ready to hang or apply the permanent window treatment.

None of this stuff will take away the pain of waking up to go to work, of course, but it will allow you to open your eyes to a southern-facing window in November without screaming. Which--in the absence of a winning lottery ticket--will certainly do until spring.