Dual Shades

Franklin Dual Shades

Two fabrics in one opening, on a level tube

Call (317) 999-5154Get Free Quote
Quick Answer

What follows is what we'd tell you in person about this service, including which rooms it belongs in and which ones it doesn't. That second list is shorter but it saves more money.

  • Service: Dual Shades 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
Dual Shades Services

Expert Dual Shades for Franklin Homes

A dual shade puts two fabrics to work in one opening. In its banded form, alternating sheer and opaque strips roll on a single tube, so a few inches of travel takes you from a clear view to a closed room. In its other form, two separate rollers share one bracket, usually a solar mesh for daylight and a room darkening fabric for night. Both suit the newer half of Franklin, where the standard nominal 3.25 inch jamb with a flat stop gives a headrail somewhere to sit. Bluffs at Young's Creek is the obvious candidate, since Arbor Homes builds there from $263,995 across plans running 1,354 to 3,198 square feet.

Band registration is the failure mode, and it's a mounting problem rather than a manufacturing one. The bands only line up when the roller tube is dead level, so a bracket set a fraction low at one end walks the front and back layers out of alignment as the shade travels, and you end up with bands that close on one side of the window while daylight still comes through the other. Franklin's mid century layer is where this bites: 618 houses from the 1950s and 837 from the 1960s have settled on Johnson County clay and their trim lines are no longer level. We shim to true level rather than to the trim, and the dual roller version has twice the hardware to fail.

When to Call

Signs You Need Dual Shades

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.

You sleep days and the room never gets past gray

A wide window makes the tube dip in the middle

The clutch slips and the shade creeps down alone

A new build left the great room glass bare

One end of the shade shows a stripe of sheer

The bead chain loop hangs free with nothing anchoring it

A cat has pulled a run in the sheer bands

Neighbors see straight in once the lamps come on

Two shades on one wall don't match band for band

A deep sill or a crank handle blocks the fabric

Our Process

How Franklin Window Treatments Handles Dual Shades

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

1

Taper disclosed before ordering

2

Custom fabrication, two to five weeks

3

Chain tensioner fastened into the trim

4

Motor travel limits set at both stops

5

Old shades and packaging taken away

Real Project Photos

Dual Shades in Franklin

Photographs from real dual shades jobs completed by our crew in Franklin and surrounding areas.

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

What Dual Shades Includes

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

The tube set dead level at the measure and again at the install, because band alignment is a level problem before it is anything else

Bracket line established with a level rather than by measuring down from the header, since headers in settled houses are rarely level

The taper that a level bracket line can leave against out-of-level trim disclosed before the order, not discovered on install day

Shim allowance planned where an opening runs out by enough to matter across the width

Diagonal checked corner to corner, along with three widths and three heights at every opening

Band height chosen against the drop so the stripes stay in proportion rather than crowding a short window

Band pairing settled in writing, a light filtering pair, a room darkening pair or a blackout-backed pair

Mounting depth measured for a cassette, which needs more room than a bare roller bracket

Tube diameter sized for two layers of fabric, since a banded shade carries roughly twice what a plain roller does

Roll direction and chain side written onto the order in plain words

The two positions demonstrated on a working sample so you see the aligned view and the offset face before buying

Rooms needing genuine darkness identified early and layered with a second shade rather than oversold on this one

Dual roller on a single bracket priced as the alternative wherever one fabric cannot do both jobs

Chain tensioner fastened to the wall or frame exactly as the product instructions require

Products specified to conform to ANSI/WCMA A100.1-2022 for cord access, cordless in rooms children use

Coupled units planned across a wide opening with the band lines matched so two shades read as one

Scope, dates and total price signed off before anything is ordered, which IC 24-5-11 requires over $150

Every shade rolled fully up and back down twice on install day to set registration and prove the fabric tracks centered

Pricing

What Dual Shades Cost in Franklin

National figures put stock shades near $60 to $600 a window and custom-fabricated shades roughly $250 to $2,600, with motorization adding roughly $300 to $1,500 per window installed. Those are published national ranges for the category and they are not a quote for an address in Franklin. A dual shade sits above a plain roller for a simple reason: there are two fabric layers joined into one sleeve on a single tube, and a cassette is part of the specification rather than an upgrade. The band tier moves the number next, since a blackout-backed pair costs more than a light filtering one. A true dual roller, two separate shades on one bracket, is priced as two shades because that is what it is. Franklin Window Treatments quotes from measured openings across Johnson County.

By Product

How Dual Shades Differ by Product

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

Single-tube banded shade: One sleeve of fabric with alternating sheer and opaque bands, joined front to back and rolling on a single tube. Move it a few inches and the layers slide against each other, which is how one shade gives you a view setting and a privacy setting.

Dual roller on one bracket: Two entirely separate shades, usually a solar screen and a room darkening fabric, carried on one bracket at the same window. It costs more than a banded shade and it's the only version of dual that reaches real darkness.

Adjustable leveling brackets: Brackets with adjustment built in, so the tube can be brought level even when the opening isn't. On this product that adjustment isn't a convenience, it's the difference between bands that register across the width and bands that don't.

Cassette headbox: A closed box around the tube. A doubled roll with a stripe pattern wrapping it looks unfinished on a bare tube, so the cassette is standard here, and its flat face also gives you a visual level line at the top of the window.

Light filtering band pair: Sheer bands paired with a solid band that diffuses rather than blocks. The room stays bright in both positions and you're choosing between a view and privacy rather than between light and dark. It's the common living room pairing.

Room darkening band pair: A denser solid band that cuts most of the light through its face when the bands are offset. It gets a bedroom to real dim, while the sheer bands keep passing light in the aligned position, which is the honest ceiling of the format.

Blackout-backed band pair: An opaque backing laminated to the solid bands, which is as dark as a single-tube dual shade goes. Darker than room darkening and still not a blackout install, because the sheer bands and the side gaps are both still there.

Bead chain with a clutch: The standard manual control and the one that lets you hit an exact band position, because a chain moves the tube in small increments. On a shade whose whole feature is where it stops, that fine control is worth something.

Motorized with saved stop positions: A motor that returns to a saved aligned position and a saved offset position exactly, every time. On a bank of windows it's the difference between using the two settings daily and settling for whatever you can eyeball.

Coupled units across a wide opening: Two shades side by side with their band lines matched at the measure and their brackets set on one level line, so the pair reads as a single treatment. Getting that right is entirely about the mounting, not the fabric.

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 Franklin 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

Dual Shades FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Franklin homeowners considering dual shades.

They solve different problems. A banded shade gives you a view through position and a closed position in one fabric, and it never gets you fully dark. Two rollers on one bracket give you a real solar mesh and a real room darkening fabric, each doing its own job properly, at the cost of a deeper bracket and a second mechanism to operate. In a family room in one of Franklin's 2,199 houses from the 1990s, the banded version usually satisfies. In a bedroom on a west elevation, where you want glare control at four in the afternoon and darkness at ten, the two roller version is the one that actually works.
The banded version doesn't get dark, full stop. Even with the opaque bands aligned, the fabric between them is sheer, and the light path around an inside mount stays open regardless, with Lutron publishing 3/4 inch per side on its Roller 20/64 and a 1/16 inch per side factory deduction. What you get is privacy and a large drop in glare. The two roller version does get dark, because the second fabric is a genuine room darkening cloth, and even then side channels or an outside mount are what close the edges. We'd rather say this now than after the nursery is finished.
More than a single roller, and it's the number that decides inside versus outside mount. A banded shade is one tube and sits close to a standard roller. A dual roller bracket carries two tubes front to back, so it needs meaningfully more depth at the stop. Franklin's post-1990 openings present a nominal 3.25 inch jamb, which takes a single tube comfortably and gets tight with two. The mid century houses that have taken later inserts into their original openings lose depth unpredictably at the insert, and that loss isn't even from one room to the next, so we measure depth at every window rather than at one.
Yes, and the two roller version needs two motors, which is the part that surprises people. Each tube runs independently, so you're buying and maintaining two of everything, and Hunter Douglas states PowerView battery life is about one year, meaning a pair of battery motors on one window is two changes annually. Nationally, motorized shades run about $300 to $1,500 per window installed and a dual sits near the top of that. Where the opening is reachable, we'd put a chain on the solar layer and a motor only on the room darkening one, which is half the hardware for most of the benefit.
Two things, and both argue for splitting the run. A long tube deflects slightly under its own weight, and on a banded shade that deflection is exactly what pushes the bands out of registration across the width, so the middle closes before the ends do. The second issue is what the mechanism carries, since two fabrics on one bracket doubles the load. On the two story great room glass documented in Franklin's 2000s plans, and on the widest openings in the 3,420 square foot Kingsbridge 3-Car plans, we use two shades under one header rather than pushing a single tube past what it holds straight.
In a period room, and in any window where the mounting can't be made level. The pre-1940 stock in Franklin's historic core carries arched and segmental heads alongside leaded transoms, in proportions that run tall and narrow, and a banded modern fabric fights all of that, so a shutter panel or a Roman shade belongs there instead. The other case is a settled opening where the trim has moved and there's no way to hide a correction. If we can't get a level line for the tube, the bands will misbehave for the life of the shade, and we'd rather sell you a plain roller that doesn't care about level.
It's a shade made from two joined layers of fabric with alternating sheer and opaque bands, rolling on one tube. Move it slightly and the front bands slide against the back ones. Line them up and you're looking out through horizontal sheers. Offset them so opaque sits over sheer and the face closes for privacy. The name also gets used for a dual roller, which is two separate shades on one bracket. Those are different products and we'll be clear which one you're buying.
Because the whole feature depends on two layers meeting where they should. The bands are fixed at a set height on both layers, so if the tube sits a little low at one end, the layers meet correctly at one side of the window and progressively out of register toward the other. What you see is a closed face at one end and a wedge of sheer showing at the other. Nothing is wrong with the shade. The bracket line is wrong, and a sixteenth of an inch across a wide window is enough to notice.
Almost always an out-of-level tube. Somebody measured down from the trim at each end and fastened the brackets there, and the trim itself wasn't level, so the tube followed it. The other candidates are a bracket that has worked loose, or fabric that has telescoped sideways on the tube after being forced when it jammed. All three are correctable. We start with a level on the cassette face, because that answers the question in about ten seconds.
Common in settled Johnson County houses, and it forces an honest choice. We set the tube level, because the bands have to register, which can leave a slightly tapered gap between the cassette and the trim at one end. Or we follow the trim so the top line looks parallel, and the bands then drift out of alignment across the width. We take level every time and we tell you about the taper first. On an outside mount we can often hide it behind the cassette return.
They can appear to, and the cause is usually the roll rather than the shade. If a shade only ever travels partway, the fabric builds slightly unevenly on the tube and the position you think of as aligned lands half a band off. The fix takes ten seconds: roll the shade all the way up and all the way back down, which re-registers it. If it happens constantly on a shade that used to behave, check the brackets, because something has moved.
Dim, and reliably not dark. Even fully offset, the sheer bands are part of the same fabric and they still pass light. A blackout-backed pair gets you noticeably further and still isn't a light seal. For a bedroom in Franklin that genuinely has to be dark, the two honest answers are a blackout roller running in side channels, or a dual roller bracket carrying a banded shade and a blackout shade so each does the job it can actually do.
In the aligned position, yes, plainly. Sheer fabric doesn't care which way light is traveling. During the day it's brighter outside so the room stays private, and after dark with lamps on, someone outside sees through those sheer bands about as well as you'd see through a screen. Offsetting the bands closes it. The evening routine is a few inches of chain or one press on a remote, which is why the saved positions on a motorized unit get used more than people expect.
Depends on how precisely you want to land. A bead chain gives the finest control, because you can move the tube a quarter inch at a time until the bands sit exactly where you want them. Cordless is fine on small shades and fussier for exact alignment, since a spring lift wants to run rather than creep. A motor is the one that nails it repeatedly, since you save the aligned and offset positions and return to them. Batteries are the recurring cost, and Hunter Douglas states PowerView life is about one year.
Ask what the window has to do at night. A banded shade is one product, one tube, two settings, and it never goes properly dark. A dual roller is two shades on a single bracket, typically a solar screen for the day and a room darkening or blackout fabric for the evening, and it does both jobs properly because each fabric is doing only one. The dual roller costs more and needs more mounting depth. In a bedroom or a media room it's usually the right call.
Telescoping is fabric walking sideways on the tube as it rolls, so over time it creeps toward one end and starts to rub inside the cassette. On a banded shade it does affect alignment, because the two layers are no longer sitting where they were designed to sit relative to each other. It usually comes from a tube that isn't level or a shade that was forced when it caught. Level brackets and running the shade full travel twice at install is most of the prevention.
Yes, and it lives or dies on the mounting. Two units side by side have to hang on one level line, with the same band height, the same fabric run and the same roll direction, or the eye picks up the mismatch immediately across the middle. We plan the band lines at the measure, order both on the same purchase so they come off one dye lot, and set both brackets from a single level reference rather than measuring each opening separately.
Vacuum on low with a brush head, and stop there. Sheer banding is a fine mesh that traps dust rather than shedding it, and scrubbing distorts the weave permanently. For a spot, blot with a barely damp cloth, don't rub, and let it dry fully before rolling the shade back up, because rolling a damp sheer against a solid band leaves a mark on both. A cassette helps a lot here by keeping dust off the top of the roll.
They can be specified that way, and the lift decides it. Cordless has no operating cord on the product, which is the direction the ANSI/WCMA A100.1-2022 work on cord access points, and inner-cord non-compliance is treated as a substantial product hazard under 16 CFR 1120.3. The tradeoff we've already covered is that exact band alignment by hand is fussier without a chain. In a child's room we take cordless or a motor and accept the fussier alignment.
Two to five weeks in the usual custom fabrication window, generally in the middle of it, since the fabric sleeve is assembled from two layers before the shade gets built onto a tube. Motorized units add a step. That window goes onto your paperwork with the scope, the dates and the total price, which the Indiana Home Improvement Contract Act requires on residential work over $150.
Areas We Serve

Dual Shades 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

Learn more →

Wood Blinds in Franklin

Stain that answers 1850s casing, not a paint chip

Learn more →

Vertical Blinds in Franklin

One pull clears a rear patio door

Learn more →
Free In-Home Measure

Schedule Your Free In-Home Measure in Franklin

Contact Information

Reach Us Directly

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

Ready to Book Your Measure?

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) 999-5154
Service area

Serving Franklin and the surrounding area

Call NowGet Quote