Customer Reviews

Redi Shade Easy Touch Cellular Window Shade 36x64-Inch, Room Darkening White

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Behind the screen of this computer is a 6-foot wide south-facing window, so on sunny days, the glare is intolerable, even though the mini-blinds. (If you're wondering why I put the screen there, it's because I setup this room in 1993, when my younger eyes were not yet glare-sensitive. Moving everything now would be impractical.)

I tried a black-out roller-shade, which completely solved the glare problem, but which broke quickly (would not go up). Next, I tried the translucent version of these Redi Shades. Didn't cut the glare nearly enough, but at least I learned how to install these things.

These room-darkening shades seem to do the job. They are not black-out, but probably cut over 95% of the light, and with the mini-blinds in front of them, the window might just as well be a wall.

For this 6' window, I used two shades, side-by-side, with an inside mount. Having now fitted and installed four of these things, I'd like to pass on some tips to make the installation easier:

1. when measuring for an inside mount, make sure to measure so that the shade will be just a bit narrower than you think you need. If it's even a hair too wide, you will have to re-cut, and that is not the easiest thing to do. If you're measuring for an outside mount, this isn't an issue.

2. cutting: the shade comes with a sharp knife (not a serrated blade), and rulers are printed on labels along both ends of the bottom edge of the shade. Also, there is a plastic sleeve that acts as a cutting guide. Before starting to cut, remove all four end-caps. You don't want to cut through them. I'd suggest pulling out some of the expanded polystyrene that is inside the rail, so that you don't cut through it and get tiny flakes of polystrene all over everything. (And you know how I learned that, don't you?)

2A. USE THE CUTTING GUIDE! It'll give you a smooth cut with little or no effort and no error. Cutting begins on the ruler edge, which is the bottom of the shade, and you cut towards the top (holding the shade upside-down). Both the bottom and the top rails are thin hollow plastic, and between them is the shade. The guide won't let you cut into the top plastic rail, so you'll have to remove the guide and finish by hand.

2B. to cut through the plastic rails (bottom, which you cut first, and top, which you cut free-hand at the end), use a fine-bladed hacksaw. The included knife can eventually cut through the rails, but it takes a lot of time and effort.

2C. once through the bottom plastic rail, switch to the included knife and cut down until it hits the bottom of the guide. Remove the guide and cut through the plastic top rail with the hacksaw.

2D. repeat this on the other side. (An "inch" on each ruler actually is 1/2 inch, so to make a 35-inch shade, you'll be cutting 1/2 inch from each side. The "35" mark is a 1/2 inch from the "36" and 1/2 inch from the "34".)

3. now comes the hardest part, and the reason the shades got 4 instead of 5 stars: The directions say to peel off the rulers, which are just stickers. But those stickers have a strong adhesive and they tear easily, making it very difficult to remove them. And, since they're on the lower-edge of the shade, if you don't remove them, you will see them whenever you raise the shade. When I got to the fourth shade, I finally found a way to get the stickers off without tearing: put some label-removing solvent on a q-tip and keep rubbing the solvent into the underside of the sticker as you s-l-o-w-l-y pull it off.

4. The rest of the included instructions are fine: they tell you how to position and attach the hangers to the window frame, and then how to snap the shade into place. Not that anyone will need this, but the hangers for the room-darkening shades are a different size (bugger) than the ones for the translucent shades, so they're not interchangeable.

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I don't know how durable these will be, and in particular, how many times they can be raised & lowered before the mechanism breaks. There's no reason to think this will happen soon, but after the roller-shade broke so quickly, I'm a bit skeptical.

UPDATE: May 31, 2011. Shades still are working fine, and now that there's a lot of bright sunlight, it's apparent that they are opaque. When they're down, the room is dark. Have not raised / lowered them too often, but the mechanism works well. If you need inexpensive room-darkening shades, these are a good choice.

I love these things. They are a great buy for the price. My mom had gotten 3 from a membership store and put them up in my house. When I moved home I was soooo glad to find them online and ordered 2 more for the livingroom. The price is great, Amazon ships QUICK, and they work great!!! My master bed is on the side of the house where the sun rises and the furthest room from the A/C so it gets HOT! I put two of these in my bedroom and one in the master bath and it cooled the rooms down tremendously!

The only negatives that I have are that they are a bit hard to cut, I actually broke one of the knives that come with them in half, so was glad I had ordered two shade at the same time. Also I have one that the material came lose from the top so I have to superglue it back. And lastly make sure you measure accurately or you will still have some sun that comes through on the sides, other wise they work great.

Overall I am VERY happy with my purchase and will be putting these in the rest of my rooms. I only wish they came in more colors and sizes.

These are quality shades that keep all the light out. It can definitely make a room dark. I use it for my home theater living room. It works so well that from the outside at night it looks like no one is home too. The shades come with very sharp knives and a cutting guide to make clean straight cuts. So it makes the shades look like custom shades. If you want to have a dark room these are the shades to have.

I have had 7 of these shade for a while now and so far 2 of them have broken. I like the way they look and the easy-touch up and down function. However, the room darkening feature adds a layer and weight to the material and they don't retract as fluidly as they should. The non-room darkening ones work much better, but one of those has broken.

A few months after I ordered these, they would only retract about halfway - sometimes as much as two-thirds, but never more than that. No matter how carefully you try to cajole them back up, they will not go up any more.

They other problem with these is that the knife included to cut them to desired length is a piece of junk. I ordered two blinds - each came with a knife - and the handles of both knives broke off, but not before I the knife had made a mess of the end of the blinds. I should have just used a hacksaw or something similar.

I have to say, this is a great idea to be able to cut your own blinds to the desired length, but these just don't work they way that they should.

This really keeps all the light out. It was relatively easy to install and I was able to use the knife that was provided to trim the shades to fit my window. The shade pulls down very easily but it doesn't have a smooth action when moving it back up. Overall very happy with them and plan on buying a couple more for another room.

Our toddler was waking up earlier and earlier as the days got longer. Hubby thought these would help. We had priced similar darkening shades at Lowe's. They were twice as much there and the store would cut them for you. We went with these instead, very glad we did. The kit included to cut them to your window width made cutting these a cinch. And best of all it worked! The little one sleeps an hour later everyday now as well. Light is blocked very well with a crack on each side, which is fine. We installed a nightlight so it wasn't a complete dungeon. Every night when we pull the shades down she says "Night night outside" and in the morning she get so excited when we open them "Hi outside!"

Bought 2 of these at a bed&bath chain store yesterday.
Cutting the first one to size was easy enough, and installation went relatively smoothly, however shade didn't work properly from that moment on. Only one side will move up and down, the other side is dead.
This worries me as my husband can be rather rough with things. If it won't stand up to me using it once, I doubt it'll last 5 minutes with him.
I wanted to use these shades in our tv room, so I need something that will stand up to being lowered and raised at least once a day. Based on what's happened so far I'm not confident that these shades will be able to do that.
I'm going to put up the second one in a minute and am hoping that the first one was just a lemon.
At such a cheap price I don't expect them to last forever, but would like them to last longer than a few minutes.
Fingers crossed that the second one works better...