greenhouse concept

Things to Consider When Choosing Greenhouse Window Shades

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Your choice of greenhouse window shades can affect the health of the plants you grow. You can install a modern garden irrigation system and still have low-quality yields if you’re using roof and window shades that do a poor job of insulating your greenhouse.

Whether you’re growing a vegetable and herb garden or raising non-crop plants simply because you have a green thumb, you’ll want to create an environment in your greenhouse that’s ideal for your plants. Choosing window shades for your greenhouse is one of the most important steps.

How to Shade a Greenhouse

Many plants, especially vegetables, need six to 20 hours of sunlight each day to thrive. In summer, however, the heat can be intense and potentially harmful to seedlings, moisture-loving plants or orchids.

Greenhouse roof and window treatments are necessary for the following:

  • Providing shade and protecting seedlings from the intense heat of the sun during summer.
  • Reducing the amount of sunlight that filters into certain parts of the greenhouse whenever necessary.
  • Regulating greenhouse temperature during summer and winter.
  • Ensuring proper ventilation (using window treatments that permit airflow while shading your plants).

If you want your greenhouse plants and crops to thrive, you need roof and window treatments that will enable you to do all these.

Below are some examples that you can consider:

  1. Window and roof blinds- Greenhouse blinds come in different forms. One is the traditional style that uses a mechanical pulley system to open, close, coil, or unfurl a rolled panel of blinds. Another is the automated style that uses rollers mounted on tracks that are installed along the length of the glass panel on the greenhouse roof or walls. You’ll find the automated variant here at Conservatory Craftsmen.
  2. Solarium shades- These are similar to automated greenhouse blinds, but instead of narrow panels that can open or close, they use shade cloths. These are large panels of durable, anti-UV fabrics made of polyethylene and polypropylene. When not in use, the shade panels on the roof are either in a concealed roll or hanging in folds on the ceiling. You can’t open or close them once extended, however, not like with blinds. Shade cloths are a must for greenhouse crops because they can block 40% to 60% of sunlight.
  3. Wall screens- It can be labor- and time-intensive to install many panels of blinds and shades in big greenhouses. The alternative is to design a system wherein you can shade multiple windows and roof panels at once. This can be a problem, however, if you have plants with different sunlight requirements under one section. Wall screens can be a remedy here. You can set them up around plants that don’t need that much sunlight without blocking the ones that do.

Choose Modern, High-Quality Automatic Greenhouse Window Shades and Roof Treatments

It’s not too late to equip your greenhouse with reliable and cost-efficient shades and blinds; and if you’re still in the process of designing or building your greenhouse, you should include them in your plans.

Conservatory Craftsmen can help you with this. We build and design luxury greenhouses along with automatic features like blinds and shades. Explore our website to see some of our previous work.

Nurture your prized plants, garden crops, or herbs well in a functional greenhouse designed by Conservatory Craftsmen. Fill out our contact form to get a quote.