Commercial Window Treatments

Commercial Window Treatments in Franklin, IN With Franklin Window Treatments

Four block faces, four different schedules

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Quick Answer

Here's what to know before specifying this for your house. Room conditions, mount type and lift system all change the outcome, and the answers below explain how each one moves the decision.

  • Service: Commercial Window Treatments for Franklin homeowners
  • Service area: Franklin, 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 Franklin, IN since 2008
Commercial Window Treatments Services

Expert Commercial Window Treatments for Franklin Homes

Franklin is a county seat, and that gives it a commercial building stock most towns this size do not have. The Franklin Commercial Historic District holds 32 contributing buildings around the courthouse square, bounded by Jackson and Jefferson Streets and listed in 1989, and it includes the 1924 Artcraft Theater, an 1853 commercial building and an 1895 former city hall and opera house. Those buildings present two completely different problems in one structure: full height storefront display glass at street level, and regular rows of tall upper floor openings above it, many of them now apartments or offices. Each of the four block faces takes a different orientation.

Phased fit outs are where commercial jobs go wrong, and the cause is dye lot. Fabric is dyed in production runs, and a phase ordered six months behind the first will not match it, which nobody spots in a sample book and everybody spots across an open floor. We reserve material at the order stage where the manufacturer allows it. Note the contract position honestly: the Indiana Home Improvement Contract Act at IC 24-5-11 governs residential work over $150, so a commercial fit out is governed by whatever you and we agree in writing. We are insured and insured, and Indiana issues no license for this trade.

When to Call

Signs You Need Commercial Window Treatments

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

Cleaning chemicals are destroying the clinic fabrics

A training room can't hold contrast on the screen

Batteries in the boardroom died again last quarter

Half a floor got new shades and the rest waited

Nobody knows which vendor supplied the existing units

Chain operated shades run across a twenty foot wall

Guest rooms get complaints about morning light

Turnover units keep needing whole new blinds

A tenant fit-out has openings with nothing scheduled

Staff cover monitors with paper against afternoon glare

Our Process

How Franklin Window Treatments Handles Commercial Window Treatments

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

1

Samples and submittals issued

2

Control type set per opening

3

Approvals returned, order released

4

Punch list walked and closed

5

Motor power and control path confirmed

Real Project Photos

Commercial Window Treatments in Franklin

Photographs from real commercial window treatments jobs completed by our crew in Franklin and surrounding areas.

Custom shades measured and installed in Franklin
Scope of Work

What Commercial Window Treatments Includes

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

Site walk with the facilities contact to log every opening, elevation and existing condition

Openings measured individually rather than typed off a floor plan, because as-built rarely matches drawn

Occupancy and fire requirements confirmed with the authority having jurisdiction before fabric selection

NFPA 701 flame propagation test documentation obtained and included in the submittal package

Fabric, hardware and finish samples submitted for approval before anything is released to fabrication

Control type and mounting height set against ADA section 308 reach ranges where the space requires it

Operating force checked against the ADA section 309.4 limit of five pounds on operable parts

Motorization specified wherever a manual control can't meet reach or force requirements

Openness factor selected per elevation so screens and monitors stay usable through the day

Dual roller assemblies drawn where one opening needs both glare control and darkness

Coupled tubes specified on wide spans so a run of openings reads as one continuous line

Written lead times issued with the order and updated in writing whenever the factory moves a date

Install phased around operating hours, floor by floor or wing by wing, with access arranged in advance

Elevator, loading and badge access coordinated so crews aren't working out of a corridor

Debris and packaging removed daily rather than staged in occupied space

Attic stock quantities agreed up front so a damaged unit can be swapped without a new order

Punch list walked with the owner's representative and closed out in writing

Operation, cleaning and parts information handed to facilities in a document they can actually find later

Pricing

What Commercial Window Treatments Cost in Franklin

Commercial pricing works per opening the same way residential does. The national ranges to anchor against are roughly $250 to $2,600 per window for custom-fabricated shades and roughly $300 to $1,500 per window installed for motorized product. Those are national category ranges, not a bid for a building in Franklin, and nobody should treat them as one. Quantity helps on a large floor plate, and fire-rated fabric, submittal work and phased after-hours access all push the other way. A property in Johnson County with a hundred identical openings prices very differently from one with forty odd shapes. Franklin Window Treatments bids from a measured opening schedule, with the fire documentation and the control specification written into it.

By Product

How Commercial Window Treatments Differ by Product

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

NFPA 701 tested screen fabric: Solar screen woven and tested to the NFPA 701 flame propagation standard, with the test documentation available for the submittal. This is the starting point for any occupancy where the code official asks for it in writing.

Dual roller assembly: Two shades on one bracket set, typically a solar screen in front and a room darkening fabric behind. It lets a conference room work as a daylit space in the morning and a presentation room in the afternoon.

Continuous cord loop with tensioner: The manual control that handles weight best on large commercial units. The tensioner is fastened per the manufacturer instructions, and in child-occupied spaces we look at cordless or motorized instead.

Cordless lift: No accessible operating cord at all, which is what you want in classrooms, childcare rooms and paediatric spaces. It limits practical size, so past a point the answer becomes a motor rather than a bigger spring.

Low-voltage motorization: Hardwired motors with a wall keypad, which is the durable answer in a building where nobody wants to change batteries on a schedule. The power work is done by a licensed electrical contractor as part of the trade coordination.

Battery motorization for retrofit: Where opening a finished wall isn't on the table, battery or rechargeable motors get automation into an existing space. Budget for the replacement interval, because a floor of battery shades is a recurring facilities task.

ADA-height wall keypad: A fixed control placed inside the reach ranges in ADA section 308 and operable well under the five pound force limit in 309.4. It's often the cleanest way to satisfy accessibility on an opening a chain never could.

Light-blocking pocket and side channels: A pocket at the header plus channels at the jambs, so a training room or a sleep room goes properly dark instead of dim. It's the difference between a blackout fabric and a blackout result.

Wipeable vinyl-faced fabric: A non-porous face that takes repeated cleaning without breaking down, specified in clinical areas and food service where the surface has to be wiped down as a matter of routine.

PVC vertical blinds: Still the right answer for multifamily turns and back-of-house openings. Individual vanes replace cheaply when one gets damaged, which matters far more than aesthetics when a unit turns every year.

Common Questions

Commercial Window Treatments FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Franklin homeowners considering commercial window treatments.

As two separate specifications, because they are two separate problems. Storefront display glass on the square sits in a shallow modern frame inside a far older masonry opening, and what it needs is glare control that does not kill the display, usually a dark mesh at 3 or 5 percent. The upper floors of those 32 contributing buildings carry tall openings in deep masonry reveals, often serving apartments or offices, and those want room darkening or insulating products. Writing one schedule for the whole building is how a job ends up wrong on both floors.
Only if we plan for it at the first order. Dye lots move between production runs, so the honest options are to order everything at once, or to reserve material from a single run with the manufacturer at the outset. Where neither is possible, we break the phasing by elevation rather than by floor, so that no two windows in the same sight line come from different lots. On the courthouse square, where each block face has a different orientation and therefore a different sun load, that split usually falls naturally along the building's own geometry.
It does, and this is one of the few towns where you can say that precisely. The buildings face the four sides of the square, so the district has north, south, east and west facing storefronts within a couple of hundred feet of each other. A west facing shop takes hard late afternoon glare straight into the display and wants a tight mesh. A north facing one gets diffuse light all day and barely needs one. Specifying the same product everywhere means overspending on half the square and underperforming on the other half. We walk the elevations before writing the schedule.
Different owner, different rules, same measuring discipline. The Franklin College Historic District covers about 207 acres with 19 contributing resources, bounded by East Monroe Street, South Forsythe Street, Grizzly Drive, Park Avenue and Branigin Boulevard, and it is campus buildings only rather than any private house. Those buildings carry long regular runs of identical tall openings, with arched and multi light windows on the older ones including Old Main and Richardson Chapel. Long runs of identical openings are the ideal case for a documented schedule, and the nineteenth century buildings should be assumed out of square throughout.
In the right rooms, yes, and the maintenance question decides it. A conference room or a west facing office with high glass benefits from scheduled operation, and an astronomical timer following actual sunrise and sunset beats a fixed clock in a climate where July evenings run long and January ones do not. The forgotten line item is batteries. Hunter Douglas states PowerView battery life is about one year, and a facilities manager carrying thirty battery shades has a standing annual job. In a commercial fit out where power is being run anyway, hardwiring is usually the correct call.
Opening by opening, with a number on every one. We record finished width, finished height, mounting depth at the stop, roll direction and any obstruction for each window, then tie those to a floor plan so the installer is not interpreting a spreadsheet on site. In the Franklin Commercial district, where buildings run from roughly 1850 to 1935 and should be assumed out of square throughout, a three point measure on every opening is not optional. That schedule is also what makes a later phase orderable without a second site visit, and what makes a warranty conversation short.
It depends on the occupancy and on what your code official requires, which is why we ask before we specify. NFPA 701 covers flame propagation testing for textiles hung vertically, and assembly, healthcare, education and hospitality spaces are where it most often comes up. The part that trips projects isn't the fabric, it's the paperwork. Test documentation has to be in the submittal package, and a fabric someone believes is compliant without a document behind it will get rejected at review.
Two sections do most of the work. Section 308 sets the reach ranges for operable parts, which decides how high a chain, wand or keypad can sit and how far it can be from where somebody can get to. Section 309.4 caps the force to operate at five pounds and requires one-hand operation without tight grasping or twisting. A heavy chain on a large shade can fail that force test. When it does, the answer is usually a motor and a keypad rather than an argument.
That's the normal way we do it. Work gets phased by floor, wing or suite, with a schedule agreed in advance so nobody's meeting is happening under a ladder. Some scopes are better after hours and some are fine mid-morning in an empty conference room. We sort out badge access, elevator use and where the boxes stage before the first crew day, because the thing that actually derails a commercial install is access, not product.
Offices, healthcare, education, hospitality and multifamily, and each one changes the specification. Healthcare wants wipeable surfaces and infection control input. Education wants cordless lifts and hardware that survives teenagers. Hospitality wants blackout that genuinely works, because a guest who can't sleep leaves a review about it. Multifamily wants a product that's cheap to repair one vane at a time. Offices want glare control on the monitors. The building type usually tells us the fabric before the design conversation starts.
Custom fabrication generally runs two to five weeks, and a large commercial order with submittal review and approval on top of that runs longer. The sequence matters: samples out, approvals back, then release to fabrication, and the clock on the factory doesn't start until approval lands. We put every date in writing and we update it in writing when the factory changes it. Building a schedule around a verbal lead time is how a project ends up with bare openings at occupancy.
Three percent is the common answer on the elevations that get direct sun, with five percent where the exposure is gentler and view matters more. The test isn't how the fabric looks in a sample book, it's whether somebody can read a monitor at the worst hour of the day. We'll hang a sample on the actual elevation and let people sit under it. Getting this wrong across a floor of a Franklin building is expensive, and it's entirely avoidable.
Yes, and we treat both as part of the scope rather than a favor. Submittals include fabric and hardware samples, cut sheets, the fire test documentation where the occupancy requires it, and a shade schedule tied to the opening numbers. At closeout, facilities gets operation and cleaning information, the fabric and hardware identification for reorders, and the attic stock count. That last one saves a lot of trouble two years later when somebody needs one shade replaced and nobody remembers the fabric.
Motorize where a manual control fails on reach, force or height, where the openings are high or behind furniture, and where the shades should move on a schedule rather than on somebody remembering. Leave manual where the openings are ordinary and reachable, because motors add cost and a maintenance obligation. The mistake we see most is motorizing a whole floor to solve a problem that exists on one elevation. Specify per opening, not per building.
They're the right answer in a retrofit where nobody's opening a finished wall, and they come with an obligation you should accept before you buy. Hunter Douglas states PowerView battery life is about one year, and commercial use with daily scheduled cycles doesn't improve on that. Multiply by the opening count and you have a recurring facilities task. Where power can be brought to the header, hardwired low-voltage motors are the better long-term call, with a licensed electrical contractor doing that part.
They get treated as one line, not as separate shades that happen to be near each other. Tubes are coupled where the spans call for it so the shades track together, and hembars are aligned so a partly lowered run doesn't look ragged from the street. On a motorized job the group is addressed to one control so nobody has to press five buttons. This is the detail that separates a commercial install that looks intentional from one that looks assembled.
A blackout fabric alone gets you dim, not dark, because light comes around the edges of any inside mount. For a room where a projected image has to hold contrast, we specify blackout fabric with a light-blocking pocket at the header and side channels at the jambs. If the room also gets used for daylit work, we run a dual roller so the screen fabric handles the everyday condition and the blackout comes down only when it's needed.
Often, and it's worth a conversation before you assume it. Bring us a shade or the original paperwork and we'll identify the fabric and hardware if it's still made. Two honest cautions: fabrics get discontinued, and fabric still in production runs in dye lots, so a new run can sit slightly off older shades on the same floor. Where the match won't hold, replacing a whole elevation at once usually looks better than patching one opening.
We are, and we insist on field measuring rather than working from the drawings. As-built openings differ from the plan more often than not, and a shade schedule built from a drawing produces a stack of product that doesn't fit and can't be returned. That means we need the openings framed and reasonably finished before we measure, which affects the schedule. We'd rather have that conversation with the general contractor early than explain a reorder later.
This is why attic stock is agreed at the start. A few spare units in the common sizes mean facilities swaps the damaged one the same week instead of waiting on a fabrication run for a single shade. Where a spare isn't available, we reorder from the shade schedule using the opening number, the fabric and the finished sizes we recorded. That record is the reason we hand over documentation rather than assuming somebody kept the packing list.
Areas We Serve

Commercial Window Treatments Across Franklin

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

Related Services

Other Window Treatment Services in Franklin

Franklin Window Treatments handles the full scope of window treatment work. Explore our other services below.

Faux Wood Blinds in Franklin

PVC where Johnson County humidity would ruin hardwood

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Wood Blinds in Franklin

Stain that answers 1850s casing, not a paint chip

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Vertical Blinds in Franklin

One pull clears a rear patio door

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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
Franklin, IN and Surrounding Areas

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Call (317) 999-5154
Service area

Serving Franklin and the surrounding area

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