Bamboo Window Shades

Bamboo Shades: How to Weave Through the Selection Process

If you're shopping for window treatments that bring natural texture into a room, bamboo shades are likely on your list. They filter daylight softly, suit a wide range of décor, and are made from one of the most renewable materials on the planet. Here's what to know before you buy, starting with what bamboo actually is.

What Exactly is the Bamboo in Bamboo Window Shades?

While most people think of bamboo as a tree, bamboo is actually a type of grass. It’s also one of the fastest-growing plants on the planet and one of the world’s most renewable resources. Bamboo is harvested in five to seven years, whereas a tree can take decades to reproduce itself. Shades made with bamboo are an eco-friendly choice: Instead of requiring fertilizer or pesticides for growth, bamboo gets all its nutrients from its discarded leaves.

The Durability of Woven Wood

As one of the most durable substances in nature, bamboo can withstand a variety of weather conditions. Therefore, bamboo shades are less likely to warp over time. Woven wood shades are made from natural woods, reeds, grasses and bamboo, and are specifically designed to minimize stretching, bowing, breaking and fading.

Bamboo Shades Are Woven Wood Shades

If you've spent any time shopping for bamboo shades, you've run into a second term: woven wood shades. The two describe the same thing. "Bamboo shades" is the everyday name most people use; "woven wood" is the industry term for the wider family of shades woven from natural materials, including bamboo, reeds, grasses, jute and rattan.

At Hunter Douglas, that collection is Provenance^® Woven Wood Shades, made from natural materials like bamboo, grasses, reeds and woods, so each individual shade has a unique look. If bamboo shades are what you're after, Provenance^® is where to look.

Interior Design Styles That Work Best with Bamboo Shades

Bamboo window treatments work well with almost any décor, whether island-inspired, modern, Mediterranean, farmhouse or traditional Victorian. Seeing them in a finished room helps more than any swatch, so browse the Provenance^® Woven Wood Shades gallery for real interiors across a range of styles.

How Much Light Control and Privacy Can I Have with Bamboo Shades?

Bamboo shades behave differently from a solid fabric shade. Woven materials have natural gaps between the reeds and grasses, so light filters through rather than being blocked. In a living room or kitchen that's exactly the appeal, giving you warm, diffused daylight and a soft glow in the evening. In a bedroom or media room, unlined bamboo shades on their own will not give you darkness. There are two ways to solve for that.

Add a liner

A liner sits behind the woven material and closes those gaps, moving the shade from light-filtering toward greater privacy and light blockage without changing how it looks from inside the room. Liner options vary by fabric.

Choose top-down/bottom-up operation

Privacy and daylight usually pull against each other. Top-down/bottom-up operation separates them. Lower the shade from the top to screen the lower half of the window while leaving the upper half open to the sky. Useful on ground-floor and street-facing rooms.