Zebra shades throughout a Kendall house

This was a whole-house zebra shade package for a single-family home in Kendall, Miami-Dade County. Five openings were covered in one visit, including the tall arched window on the double-height wall and the window over the stairwell.

The practical requirement was straightforward: the family wanted consistent daylight control across the main living space, but the highest opening could not realistically be reached day to day. That single constraint decided how the package was split between motorized and manual operation.

The house has two-storey interior walls, so several windows sit well above head height. The arched opening at the top of that wall is the one that lets in the most daylight and is also the hardest to reach — a chain there would have meant a ladder every time the shade needed to move.

The stairwell window created the same issue on a smaller scale: it is reachable during installation, but it sits over an open flight of stairs, which affects how the bracket work is approached.

Zebra shades were installed on every opening in this house, so the whole wall reads as one consistent treatment rather than a mix of products at different heights.

Zebra shades (also called dual-layer or banded shades) are built from a single fabric with alternating sheer and solid horizontal bands. Rolling the fabric a few centimetres shifts the bands in or out of alignment, so the same shade moves from an open view-through position to a closed privacy position without being raised or lowered.

That makes them a practical choice where daylight changes through the day: the sheer bands soften glare while keeping the window readable, and the solid bands close the opening when privacy matters more than the view.

One shade in this project — the high arched window — is motorized and solar powered, so it operates by remote from floor level and needs no wiring run up the two-storey wall.

The remaining four shades are standard manual chain-operated units. They are all within easy reach, so there was no reason to add motors, batteries or remotes to openings that can simply be adjusted by hand.

A motorized shade is raised and lowered by a tubular motor inside the roller tube instead of a chain or cord. Because there is nothing to reach for, motorization is the practical answer on openings that sit above head height or behind furniture.

A solar-powered motor is charged by a small panel at the window, so the shade runs without wiring back to a power source and without the electrical work an in-wall supply would require.

All five shades use the same beige fabric, which keeps the tall wall visually calm instead of drawing attention to the individual windows. Against the light interior walls of the house the beige bands read as a soft, warm layer rather than a hard block of colour.

Each shade is finished with a Miami Smart Blinds bottom bar, visible in the close-up photograph.

The full scope for this address is listed below. Every shade was measured on site and produced to the specific opening size, including the arched unit.

Work was completed in one visit, with the high-level opening handled first while access equipment was in position and the lower windows finished afterwards.

The finished job gives the house one continuous zebra shade treatment from the stairwell up to the arched window at the top of the wall. Daylight through the sheer bands still lights the room, and every shade — including the one that cannot be reached — can be adjusted whenever the sun moves.