Window covering for apartment

5 years ago

last modified: 5 years ago

Hello all! Hoping someone can help me with a window covering solution for my new apartment that requires minimal permanent change.

My apartment already comes with roller shades, but they are very sheer - I'm concerned that it might even be semi-see thru from the outside when my light is on at night.

I'm looking to have window covering that has some kind of sheer cover during the day (to protect the furniture from the strong sun and give me some privacy while letting light in), but lets me black out my rooms in the evening.

Because I'm renting, I do need to minimize any permanent changes.

I'm open to options that either keeps this roller shade but adds a blackout option OR replaces this with an option that has both sheer cover and blackout options.

Here are some photos of my windows:

My old place used to have those dual cellular blinds that had sheer layer on top and blackout blinds on the bottom, which I loved, but I'm assuming that kind of change is not an option for a rental - someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

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Comments (3)

recordaras
5 years ago
What kind of budget do you have for this? I can think of two options - one pricey and one very cheap! Cheap would be to get those temporary paper shades and use them at night. I have a friend who lived with them for several months after moving in to their new place and they held up. More expensive and risky would be to find out the manufacturer of the current shades and see if they carry a dual roller (or some other shade that better suits your needs) and if that uses the same mounting brackets as the existing ones. That way you could carefully pop out your current shades and store them in a closet till it’s time to move out. However if some minor hardware change happened since the original shades were purchased that might be a problem as you’d need to replace the mounting brackets. Also once you move out you’ll be stuck with hundreds of dollars (that slider door will be expensive) worth of custom shade that you can’t really reuse elsewhere.
Amy Kim thanked recordaras
Annie Deighnaugh
5 years ago
First thing to do is go outside at night with your shades drawn and the lights on and see how much privacy you do get from them. You may not need to do anything.

Either you can change something or you can't or you can plan on repairing whatever holes you put in the walls before you leave the apartment.

For privacy, you could just mount a drapery rod over the window and hang curtains for privacy and plan on removing and patching holes when you move out.

Otherwise, for a no hole solution, think about getting a folding screen that you can park in front of the sliders for nighttime privacy.
Amy Kim thanked Annie Deighnaugh
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Amy Kim
Original Author
5 years ago
Great suggestions! I decided to take hybrid approach:
- For the livingroom balcony doors, I'll add a double-rod for drapes with one sheer and one darker drapes. I think that will make it easier for opening the balcony doors than the roller shades anyway.
- For the bedroom windows, I'm going to look into double rollers from the same company... and if it doesn't exist, I'll look into adding drapes there, also. I would love to get custom cellular shades like the ones I had, but I don't feel good about adding holes to the window frames, which I imagine is harder to patch than hole in walls.