Duette® Honeycomb Shades Buying Guide

Duette® Honeycomb Shades Buying Guide
18 Jul 2020
Honeycomb shades are an innovative window treatment that look beautiful and insulate your home all year round. Their especially engineered honeycomb construction traps air in distinct pockets, which creates insulation that can help lower your energy consumption and electricity bills. Virtually every kind of window, even skylights and unusual shaped window panes, can be decorated with honeycomb shades. If you are thinking of installing honeycomb shades in your home, we bring to you the most definitive buying guide that will help you make the correct decisions.
 
  • Key reasons to buy honeycomb shades
Lowering your electricity bills and sound absorption are the key reasons to opt for honeycomb shades. India’s metropolitan cities like Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai & Kolkata have high temperatures & humidity during summers which makes the use of air-conditioning compulsory. By providing insulation at the window, honeycomb shades help lower your electricity bill. Duette® Honeycomb Shades absorb up to 70% of sound energy thus helping you better the acoustics of your room.
 

 
  • Type of honeycomb shade construction
Honeycomb shades are available in the following constructions:
  1. Single honeycomb
  2. Double honeycomb
  3. Triple honeycomb
  4. Architella
The type of construction you choose will depend on the temperature extremes you live in. For particularly hot or cold temperatures, the double honeycomb, triple honeycomb or Architella® construction would make for a good choice for their ability to provide higher insulation.
 
  • Fabric opacity & light control
Your choice of fabric materiaYour choice of fabric opacity will depend on your need for privacy, light control and light blockage. You have 4 options of fabrics to choose from:
 
  1. Sheer fabric - If you prefer plenty of natural light, but filtered and diffused through a soft fabric, then you must choose sheer fabric for your honeycomb shades.
  2. Semi-sheer fabric - This fabric acts just like the sheer fabric, but has more opacity as compared to the sheer fabric.  
  3. Light filtering fabric - With apartments windows peeping into each other, maintaining privacy is a challenge and it comes by trading off the sunlight entering your room. Light filtering fabrics filter the sunlight through and also block outside views into your home, thus helping you achieve the perfect balance between privacy and light control.
  4. Room darkening fabric - If you find yourself waking up early due to the sunlight spilling in through the sheer or semi-sheer fabric, if you have an untraditional schedule that requires you to sleep during the day then you must choose the room darkening fabric. This fabric completely blocks the sunlight, and lets you create room darkening on demand which helps improve your sleep quality.
 
  • Pleat size
The size of the honeycomb cell is referred to as the pleat size. Honeycomb shades are available in plenty of pleat sizes. The choice of pleat size majorly depends on the size of your window. This is a technical choice and an expert’s help here would be the best way forward.
 
  • Orientation
Honeycomb shades are available in both horizontal and vertical orientation. Though the vertical application is recommended for doors and not windows
 
  • Fabric design, textures & colours
This is one factor that is completely dependent on you. There are plenty of choices available in the design, texture & colours of fabrics. Spend plenty of time considering your options and ensure that your choice fits the style of your apartment and is exactly as per your taste.
 

 
  • The operating system
The operating system of your honeycomb shades will determine how much you enjoy your honeycomb shades. Here too, you have plenty of choices to consider:
 
  1. Manual operation - You have many modern options to choose from if you are opting for manual operating systems. The options are as below:
    • EasyRiseTM - Pulling down on the front of this continuous loop raises your shade while pulling on the rear of the loop lowers it.
    • UltraGlide® - Features a single retractable cord that always remains at a constant length when raising and lowering your window treatments.
    • LiteRise® - A cordless system that simply lets you push up with your hand to raise and pull down to lower.
    • VertiglideTM - The ideal choice for side-to-side openings, sliding doors or as room dividers.
  2. Automatic operation/ Motorised operation - If you are habituated to frequent opening and closing of the window blinds throughout the day, then you must choose the automatic operation system which comes with many advantages. For ex. PowerView® Automation from Hunter Douglas allows you to control or schedule your honeycomb shades through a remote control, through a mobile app and even through voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home.
  • Prefer only premium honeycomb shades
Only honeycomb window shades can offer you the complete benefit of energy saving, sound absorption as well as choice of fabric opacity, fabric material, colours, designs & textures. Hence you must only opt for premium window honeycomb blinds.
 
  • Should honeycomb shades be purchased online?
While there could be honeycomb window shades available on online marketplaces in India, it is not recommended to buy honeycomb shades online because these blinds will only be available in standard sizes and hence won’t fit well if your window size differs. For your best experience, we recommend that you opt only for bespoke honeycomb shades and refrain from buying honeycomb window shades online.

Where to buy Hunter Douglas Duette® Honeycomb Shades?

Hunter Douglas Duette® Honeycomb Shades are the most premium honeycomb shades available in the market today. To buy Hunter Douglas Duette® Honeycomb Shades you can visit a Hunter Douglas Dealer near you. You can also submit an enquiry online by clicking here.