The advantages of high performance blind fabrics

High performance blind fabrics play a crucial role when identifying strategies to prevent solar heat gain and glare, or to reduce air conditioning bills.

In this blog, we pick our way through some of the key decisions specifiers make when choosing fabrics and recommend a few options to consider.

Protection against solar gain 

If the number one priority is to protect users from solar gain, look for a blind that reflects more of the sun’s energy away from the building. Recent developments in metallised blinds have created a range of excellent options, with SilverScreen® an excellent option to consider.

Depending on the colour you choose, this material will reflect up to 82% of solar energy away from the building. The fabric combines fibreglass and PVC which is coated on the outside with aluminium. The metallic element reflects heat which a normal fabric would absorb or let through into the room. 

SilverScreen offers long life and a uniform external appearance no matter what colours are chosen for the fabric interior. It also provides excellent protection against glare with a T value of just 3%. 

Sustainability 

While PVC blinds such as SilverScreen are fully recyclable, some specifiers prefer to avoid the material where possible. 

Verosol EnviroScreen is a polyester alternative, which also features a metallised backing to reflect 74% of the sun’s energy. This means slightly more is absorbed by the fabric – the small compromise specifiers make with non-PVC blinds. Glare is kept to a minimum with only 2-4% of the light entering the room once the blind is down. 

EnviroScreen is one of the few blind fabrics so far to have received Cradle-to-Cradle accreditation. 

However, many fabrics have alternative sustainability certifications, such as OEKO-TEX or GreenGuard. Again, the final choice depends on precisely what you are looking for. 

If you’d like to improve your knowledge of what sustainable blinds can do for the buildings you design, you can sign up for our upcoming webinar on the topic here.

Blackout 

Some rooms like meeting halls, presentation suites and cinemas may require total blackout.

The difference between a blackout fabric and something that lets a little light through can be immense. ShadeTech’s DeltaBlock®30 is totally opaque – no light gets through. For a polyester alternative, you could consider Thetablock®60 which features a white reflective backing adding uniformity to the exterior view. 

Acoustic 

Sometimes your blind fabric needs to solve an issue of sound rather than light. 

Acoustic fabrics are designed to absorb noise from inside or outside the building, while also restricting solar gain and glare. We recommend several specialist fabrics from Silent Glass and Création Baumann.  

Sound absorption is measured as an alpha (α) coefficient. 0 means no sound is absorbed while 1 means all the sound is absorbed. Silent R from Création Baumann is highly effective, with an alpha value of 0.7, and its double-faced weave offers different looks depending on the effect required. 

If you’d like to discuss high performance blind fabrics, contact us here and our expert team will be able to assist.