How Handmade Haven Simplified Life With Motorized Roller Shades

Ashley Basnight transformed her bedroom and dining room bay windows with fully automated Roller Shades.

Ashley Basnight’s primary bedroom features a beautiful lake view through three bay windows, where she created a seating area featuring a pair of mossy green upholstered chairs. The vignette is perfect other than having to dodge around the furniture to open and close the draperies daily.

To solve the problem, the DIY maven behind Handmade Haven added LEVOLOR® InMotion™ Motorized Roller Shades. Now, she uses the InMotion app to schedule when the shades rise and fall. 

Instead of manually opening her shades, Ashley can use the InMotion app to adjust them on the fly or schedule them to be in certain positions to accommodate different lighting needs throughout the day. Connect motorized Roller Shades to a home automation system for voice control.

Ashley’s motorized, room-darkening Roller Shades have a motor concealed inside the roll, which allows her to lower and raise the shades using a remote control or the LEVOLOR InMotion app. The simple remote enables Ashley to open or close the shades with a click of a button from the comfort of her bed.

What makes them smart Roller Shades? Ashley added the InMotion hub when she customized her shades. The hub, which connects to her home’s Wi-Fi, allows her to control her shades with a home automation system, such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, IFTTT, and Siri.

Smart-home Roller Shades benefits

• Automated scheduling: Organize natural lighting around scheduled activities in any room.
• Voice commands: Simply say, “Alexa, open the kitchen shades,” and watch them rise.

Even without connecting to a smart-home system, Ashley can use the LEVOLOR InMotion app to adjust her shades to fit her life. She can use the app to create scenes that adjust the shades for specific needs at specific times of day. In the bedroom, that could mean scheduling them to open each day at 7:30 a.m. and close again at 7 p.m. In her dining room, where she also installed motorized Roller Shades, she could schedule them to lower each weekday in the wintertime to block glare from the low winter sun.

Additional examples of InMotion app scenes include:

• Wake up sunshine: Raise the shades to full open and let in the morning light to help school-age children rise and shine.
• Mid-day glare: Lower the shades halfway to block late afternoon glare from computer or TV screens.
• Enjoy the sunset: Raise the shades just before sunset to enjoy the sky’s changing hues.
• Have a good night: Lower the bedroom shades one hour before bedtime to ensure privacy even before pulling down the bedcovers

Roller Shades have a sleek, minimal appearance, making them an ideal complement to the bay window draperies in Ashley’s bedroom and dining room. Roller shade fabric, light control, and valance options enabled Ashley to get the right look for each space.

LEVOLOR has over 100 colors and patterns to fit a wide variety of interior decor styles. Ashley went with neutrals: Biscuit, a tan fabric, in the dining room as a neutral background to her burnt umber draperies and Sand, an off-white fabric, in the bedroom to blend with the white, pinstriped draperies.

Liners change the level of light the closed shades let in. Because they are white, liners give the shades a consistent appearance when viewed from outside the house.

Roller Shade light-control liner options:

• Blackout: Blocks light and provides full privacy
• Room Darkening: Minimizes light and enhances privacy (Ashley opted for room-darkening liners for both rooms.)
• Light Filtering: Softly filters light while maintaining privacy
• No Liner: Softens light while limiting privacy

Blind and shade valances conceal the mechanical operators at the top of the window covering for a clean, tailored look.

Roller Shade valance options:

• Standard: A fabric insert that matches the shade (Ashley chose a standard valance for both rooms)
• Cassette: A curved headrail and fabric insert that match the shade
• None/Open Roll: The fabric roll is visible

Installation for motorized Roller Shades is the same as manually operated Roller Shades when it comes to hanging the shades. The only difference is the motorized shade must be paired with the simple remote control and the InMotion app.

Complete motorized Roller Shade setup in five simple steps:

1. Select a pairing channel by using the plus and minus buttons on the remote.
2. Press and hold the programming button on the window covering for about two seconds, until the shade jogs and/or beeps once.
3. In the next 10 seconds, press and hold the stop button on the remote until the shade jogs twice and/or beeps three times.
4. Set up the hub.
5. Download the InMotion app and use it to guide connection to your smart-home automation system and set up scenes.

Read the full installation instructions or browse our home automation quick-start guides.

If you’ve ever found yourself squeezing behind furniture like Ashley used to do to open and close window coverings, then motorized blinds and shades are for you. Here are a few reasons motorized Roller Shades are worth it:

• Spend less time adjusting window coverings and more time enjoying your home.
• Have the convenience of adjusting the shades at a moment’s notice without having to drop what you’re doing.
• Create scenes that give you peace of mind that window coverings are closed at night while you’re away on vacation.

Ready to simplify your life with motorized window treatments? Get started by ordering free swatches.