Cellular Shades

Cellular Shades in New Palestine, IN

Honeycomb cells for a climate with real winter and real summer

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Quick Answer

These are the questions we field most often about this product. Several of the answers include a caveat. That's deliberate, because a caveat before the sale is far cheaper than a complaint after one.

  • Service: Cellular Shades for New Palestine homeowners
  • Service area: New Palestine, IN and surrounding areas
    • The measure gets scheduled quickly. The build does not, because your fabric or shutter panel is cut to your numbers after you order. Two to five weeks is normal. Service calls skip that step entirely.
  • Insured and bonded
  • Serving New Palestine, IN since 2008
Cellular Shades Services

Expert Cellular Shades for New Palestine Homes

Cellular shades are the one window covering with a published energy result behind them, and New Palestine's climate gives that result something to work on. This is IECC Climate Zone 5A, with a July average high of 85.2 degrees and a January average low of 20.9, so a window here has a real cooling load and a real heating load in the same year. DOE and Oak Ridge National Laboratory testing found cellular shades saved up to 20 percent of heating energy and up to 15 percent of total heating and cooling energy against a bare window. In a 16 to 24 opening Bridgewood or Centennial house, that applies to a lot of glass.

The honest limits are three, and none of them are secret. A cell that gets crushed, by a raised bottom rail jammed against a stop or by a hand pushing the fabric aside, keeps the crease permanently. Dust settles inside the cells and cannot be vacuumed out easily, so a shade in a Bridgewood kitchen that opens onto the great room ages faster than one in a back bedroom. And the energy figure is a comparison against a bare window, not against whatever you have now, so if there is already a lined drapery on that opening the gain is much smaller. We say which windows will repay the upgrade and which will not.

When to Call

Signs You Need Cellular Shades

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

Cells look dusty inside and wiping does nothing

The west bedroom is unusable by late afternoon

A bathroom needs light and privacy at once

You want daylight but not the sidewalk looking in

Pinholes of light show through a closed blackout shade

A patio slider still has hard vertical vanes

A shade crushed behind furniture won't sit flat again

Arched windows have never had anything on them

The shade creeps down on its own after ten minutes

One room runs cold no matter the thermostat

Our Process

How New Palestine Window Treatments Handles Cellular Shades

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

1

Fabric opacity confirmed in writing

2

Light gap and condensation disclosed

3

Bottom rail levelled and tested

4

Motor travel limits set

5

Care and cleaning demonstrated

Real Project Photos

Cellular Shades in New Palestine

Photographs from real cellular shades jobs completed by our crew in New Palestine and surrounding areas.

Custom shades measured and installed in New PalestinePlantation shutters fitted to a New Palestine windowCellular shades in a New Palestine living room
Scope of Work

What Cellular Shades Includes

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

Room-by-room walk to decide where the energy case is real and where it isn't

Three widths and three heights per opening with a diagonal square check

Mounting depth measured so the headrail sits fully inside the opening where an inside mount is wanted

Single cell or double cell specified per room rather than picked once for the whole house

Cell size chosen against the opening, smaller cells on short windows so the stack stays in proportion

Light filtering, room darkening and blackout fabrics separated in writing before anything is ordered

Top-down bottom-up specified where street privacy and daylight both matter at the same window

Cordless lift specified as the default in bedrooms, nurseries and stairwells

Continuous cord loop with a tensioner used only where weight or height makes cordless impractical

Products specified to conform to ANSI/WCMA A100.1-2022 for cord access

Winter condensation risk on tight inside mounts explained at the measure

Headrail clearance from the glass checked so the shade isn't sealed against a cold surface

Light gap per side disclosed for inside mounts and written on the paperwork

Vertical cellular units drawn where the opening is a slider rather than a window

Specialty shapes measured with a template where an opening is arched or angled

Wide spans reviewed for headrail deflection and split into two units where that's the right call

Bottom rail leveling and full travel tested at every unit on install day

Old product removed, brackets pulled and the wall left ready for the new mount

Pricing

What Cellular Shades Cost in New Palestine

National category numbers put stock shades around $60 to $600 per window and custom-fabricated shades around $250 to $2,600 per window. They're national ranges, published for the category, and they aren't a quote for any address in New Palestine. Cellular sits across a wide part of that band because the construction varies so much. A single cell light filtering shade on a small opening is near the bottom. A double cell blackout shade with top-down bottom-up on a tall window is near the top, and it should be, since you're paying for two lift systems and a heavier fabric. Size, cell count, fabric opacity and lift type are the four levers. New Palestine Window Treatments prices from measured openings in Hancock County, not from a per-window average.

By Product

How Cellular Shades Differ by Product

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

Single cell, 3/8 inch: The small cell keeps the stack tight at the top of the window, which matters on short openings and transoms. Specify it where you want the shade nearly gone when it's raised and the room isn't an energy problem.

Single cell, 9/16 inch: The everyday size. It gives you real cell depth without a heavy stack, and it covers most bedrooms, living rooms and offices. This is the default we start from unless a room argues for something else.

Double cell, 3/8 inch: Two rows of cells means two pockets of trapped air across the same opening. Choose it on the elevations that get hit hardest, which around here usually means the north wall in January and the west wall in July.

Double cell, 3/4 inch: The deepest construction we normally hang. It stacks taller and costs more, so we reserve it for tall windows on hard elevations where the energy argument does the work of justifying it.

Light filtering fabric: Daylight comes through diffused and the room stays bright without direct glare. It's the right call in kitchens, living rooms and any space where you want softness rather than darkness.

Room darkening fabric: A denser fabric, sometimes with a liner inside the cell, that cuts most of the light through the face. Bedrooms are the obvious use. Understand that an inside mount still passes light at the edges.

Blackout fabric: The heaviest option, with a light-blocking liner in the cell. Pair it with an outside mount or side tracks if the goal is a genuinely dark room rather than a dim one. On its own it darkens, it doesn't seal.

Top-down bottom-up: Two rails on independent controls, so you can drop the top for daylight while the bottom stays up for privacy. It earns its cost in bathrooms and in any room facing a sidewalk or a close neighbor.

Cordless lift: No lift cord anywhere on the shade. It's what we put in kids' rooms by default, and it's the cleanest thing to operate on a shade you touch every day. Wide units want a hand at each end of the rail.

Vertical cellular: The same honeycomb fabric running on a track for a patio slider, stacking to one side. It gives a sliding opening the insulating construction that a vertical blind can't, and it looks like fabric rather than hardware.

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 New Palestine 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

Cellular Shades FAQ

Questions we hear most often from New Palestine homeowners considering cellular shades.

Double cell traps a second air pocket and performs better on a January morning when the average low is 20.9 degrees. It also stacks taller when raised and costs more per window, which in a Centennial plan running 16 to 24 openings adds up quickly. Our usual split is double cell on bedrooms and any north facing room that stays cold, single cell everywhere the shade is mostly about privacy. On a wide rear opening the double cell also gives you a slightly stiffer shade that holds its shape better across the span, which matters more than the energy number on that particular window.
On specific windows, yes. It gives you daylight through the top of the opening while the bottom stays covered, which is the right answer for a front facing room on a section road like 400 South where you want light without a view in from the street. It costs more because there are two lift systems in one shade and two rails to align. It is wasted on a rear window facing cropland behind Deer Run, where nobody is looking in and the whole point is the view. We recommend it room by room rather than as a whole house option.
They collect what the kitchen produces. The cell structure that makes the shade work also makes it a trap for cooking grease and airborne dust, and unlike a slat you cannot wipe the inside of a cell. In a post-2000 New Palestine plan the kitchen usually opens onto the great room, so the shade is exposed to the whole cooking area rather than one window's worth. We'd rather put faux wood or a roller over a sink and keep the cellular shades in the bedrooms and the front rooms, where the energy argument is strongest and the air is cleaner.
Not properly. The cell is a insured fabric structure, and once it takes a hard crease the fold stays visible whether the shade is up or down. Individual cells can sometimes be replaced by the manufacturer on a newer shade, but the labor and the freight usually approach the cost of a new one in that size. Prevention is cheaper: we set the mounting height so a fully raised shade does not jam against the head, and in a Willow Ridge or Centennial North house with young children we specify cordless lift so nobody is hauling on a cord to force the shade past its stop.
They fit better than most people expect, because the shade itself is thin and the headrail is shallow. The problem there is not the product, it's the opening. Those 163 pre-1940 houses have real wood jambs, molded casing and storm panel build ups that quietly remove inside mount depth, and the openings are out of square after 85 to 185 years. A cellular shade cut square to a crooked opening shows a tapering light line down one side. We three point measure every opening on that plat and often recommend an outside mount on the face of the casing instead.
It means a comparison, not a bill. DOE and Oak Ridge National Laboratory measured up to 20 percent heating energy and up to 15 percent total heating and cooling energy saved against a bare window, and we won't convert that into dollars for you because the conversion depends on things nobody measured in your house. What we will say is where it applies most. In the 223 New Palestine houses built in 2020 or later, a material share have never had any covering fitted at all, so those windows are exactly the bare window baseline the testing used.
There's real testing behind the claim, and it deserves to be quoted accurately. Department of Energy and Oak Ridge National Laboratory work found cellular shades saved up to 20 percent of heating energy, and up to 15 percent of total heating and cooling energy, measured against a bare window. Two things matter in that sentence: it's against a bare window, and it's a ceiling rather than a promise. We won't turn those percentages into dollars for your house, because the honest conversion depends on your rates, your habits and your home.
Because we're in IECC Climate Zone 5A, which means a real heating load and a real cooling load in the same calendar year. January in the Indianapolis area averages a high near 36.1F and a low near 20.9F. July averages a high near 85.2F, with a muggy stretch running from late May to late September. Most window treatments earn their keep in one season. A cellular shade is doing something in both, which is why the payback conversation looks different here than it would in a mild climate.
Double cell puts two rows of trapped air across the opening instead of one, so it does more thermally and stacks taller when raised. Single cell costs less and keeps the stack tight. Our usual approach is not to buy the same thing everywhere. Put double cell on the elevations that actually punish you, the cold north wall and the hot west wall, and put single cell in the interior rooms and the hallway where the shade is really about privacy.
It's two rails on separate controls. You can pull the top rail down to let daylight into the upper part of the window while the bottom stays raised for privacy, or run it as a normal shade. It's worth it in a bathroom, in a front room facing a sidewalk, and in any room where you'd otherwise pick between light and being seen. It costs more because you're buying two lift systems, and it does add a little stack.
It can, and this is the disclosure people wish they'd had. A tight inside mount holds a layer of still air right against a cold interior surface. On a very cold January morning that surface can go damp, and the bottom rail or the fabric edge can pick up moisture. It's a comfort and maintenance issue rather than a defect. We mitigate it by keeping some clearance at the mount, and by raising the shade during the day so air moves across the window.
A little, over years, and it's manageable. Most of it stays near the openings at the ends. A vacuum brush across the face and a puff of compressed air through the cell ends handles a normal house. Don't submerge them, and don't scrub a light filtering fabric with anything wet, since water marks show on the face and don't come out. Blackout fabrics wipe more forgivingly because the liner is inside the cell rather than on the surface.
There is one, and it's the reason people occasionally feel misled after the fact. The shade has to be narrower than the opening to travel, so the factory takes a deduction and light comes in down each side. Lutron publishes 3/4 inch per side as a real figure on their roller product, and cellular behaves the same way. Tall shades leak more. If a bedroom needs to be dark, an outside mount that overlaps the trim beats an inside mount every time.
That's the reason cordless exists. A cordless lift has no accessible lift cord at all, which is exactly what the ANSI/WCMA A100.1-2022 work on cord access is about, and an inner-cord failure is treated as a substantial product hazard under 16 CFR 1120.3. We specify cordless as the default in any room a child uses in New Palestine, and if a window is tall enough that cordless gets awkward, we look at motorization rather than putting a cord back into a kid's room.
Enough to plan for. A raised cellular shade compresses into a stack of folded fabric plus the headrail, and the taller the shade and the deeper the cell, the taller that stack. A tall double cell blackout unit takes noticeably more room at the top than a short single cell. If the view out the top of the window matters, we can mount above the opening on an outside mount so the stack sits on the trim rather than on the glass.
A bit, and less than the marketing suggests. The trapped air in a honeycomb absorbs some high-frequency sound, so a room with hard floors feels calmer with fabric across the windows. It does nothing meaningful about low-frequency traffic rumble, because that travels through structure rather than air. If sound is the actual problem, layering heavy drapery over the shade does more than upgrading the shade, and we'll tell you that instead of selling you a deeper cell.
Yes, with a template rather than a tape. An arch, an angled top over a stair or a trapezoid in a great room gets measured by making a physical pattern of the actual opening, because the geometry never matches what the plan says. Understand the tradeoff: most specialty shapes are stationary, so an arch fills the opening and stays there. If the shape has to operate, we look at splitting the opening into a fixed upper unit and a working lower unit.
Different jobs. A roller is a single layer of fabric and it's the better tool for glare control and view management, especially in a solar screen weave. A cellular is a folded structure with air inside it, so it's the better tool for comfort at the window in January and July. In a lot of New Palestine houses the right answer is both, on different elevations, and occasionally both on the same window with a dual bracket.
Vertical cellular does. It runs the same honeycomb fabric on a track, stacking to one side, so a sliding opening gets an insulating fabric instead of hard vanes. It's worth measuring the stack width carefully, because the stacked fabric covers part of the opening and you don't want it landing over the door you actually use. We check which panel slides and set the stack on the fixed side.
Usually the lift, not the fabric. Cords inside the shade run through the cells and over pulleys, and after many thousands of cycles they wear. Cordless mechanisms lose a bit of spring tension over years, which shows up as a shade that creeps down slowly. Both are serviceable, and both are why we prefer brands that still sell parts years later. The fabric itself, kept out of direct water, generally outlasts the mechanism by a wide margin.
Areas We Serve

Cellular Shades Across New Palestine

We measure and install in every one of these New Palestine 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 New Palestine

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

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Wood Blinds in New Palestine

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Vertical Blinds in New Palestine

Vane coverage for the door walls in New Palestine's newest plans

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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
New Palestine, 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) 854-7158
Service area

Serving New Palestine and the surrounding area

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