The Short Answer: Solar Shades Block Heat and Glare Without Blocking the View
Look, nobody wants to stare at a dark, heavy tarp when they’re sitting on their own deck. That defeats the whole point of having a backyard.
Solar shades are different. They use a high-tech woven mesh that reflects a large share of that heat and glare back out through the glass, right at the source — mounted indoors, with nothing hanging outside to fight Edmonton wind or snow, but somehow you can still see right through them. It’s honestly a bit like magic the first time you drop them down on a blazing July afternoon.
Why Your Patio Becomes Unusable by Mid-Afternoon
You know how it goes.
June hits, you’re full of optimism, drinking coffee on the deck at 8:00 AM. Fast forward to 3:00 PM. The sun has swung around to the west, hitting your patio door at a brutal angle, and your composite deck is literally radiating heat like an oven element.
Add in light bouncing off your neighbor’s white vinyl siding or your own fresh concrete pad, and suddenly your backyard is a literal solar cooker. You come inside to escape it — except by 3 PM your living room somehow feels hotter than the deck did, because that west-facing patio door has been acting like a magnifying glass into your house for the last six hours.
What “Solar Shades” Actually Means
Let’s clear something up right now: a solar shade is not an indoor blackout blind.
If you put a standard bedroom blackout blind outside, the wind will catch it like a sail and rip it right off your ledger board in five minutes flat. Solar shades are woven screens with openness factors (like 1%, 3%, or 5%). They breathe. The wind passes right through the weave, which keeps them stable, while the tight knit intercepts UV rays before they turn your patio into a sauna.
Kool UV Explained: The Option Built for This Exact Problem
When the late-afternoon sun hits your sliding glass doors at that brutal angle, you don’t need to shade the whole deck to fix it — the real problem is what’s coming through the glass into your living room. That’s exactly what Kool UV is built for.
You mount it directly inside over the patio door glass. So if any lingering glare or solar heat managed to bypass your exterior shade, Kool UV kills it instantly right at the glass line without ruining your view of the yard. It keeps the indoor living space cool and glare-free, meaning your AC finally gets a break on those 30-degree summer afternoons.
Indoor and Outdoor Screens: When You Need a More Permanent Setup
Sometimes an outdoor drop-down shade isn’t enough, or your layout calls for a screened-in porch vibe that stays up year-round. If you’re looking to enclose a space permanently against bugs, extreme wind, and angled sun, check out our Indoor and Outdoor Screens. It transforms an exposed, miserable corner of the house into an actual usable room.
Real Use Case: Home Offices and Sunrooms With the Same Glare Problem
Everyone thinks patio shades are just for decks, but let’s be real—the worst glare usually hits your indoor spaces.
If you’ve got a home office or a west-facing sunroom, you know the pain. By 2 PM, your computer screen is totally washed out, your forehead is sweating, and your AC is groaning. Adding Kool UV over that window drops the room temperature noticeably, because it reflects most of that heat and glare back out before it fully settles into the room. It’s life-changing if you work from home.
FAQ
Do solar shades actually block heat, or just glare?
Both, actually—though stopping the heat is the real superpower here. By blocking up to 90–95% of UV and infrared rays before they hit your glass windows, they stop your home from acting like a greenhouse.
Is Kool UV different from a regular blackout blind?
Yes, and it’s not just a naming difference. A blackout blind is built to block light completely, which means when it’s down, your view is gone too. Kool UV is built specifically to cut glare and reflect heat while staying see-through, so you can keep your patio door feeling open even in the middle of a hot afternoon. Think of it as a heat-and-glare filter rather than a cover.
Will Kool UV block my view of the yard?
No — that’s the main point of it. Kool UV is designed to stay transparent enough that you can still see the yard, the kids, or the deck clearly while it’s doing its job. If you wanted something that fully blocks the view, that’s what a standard blackout blind is for; Kool UV exists for exactly the situation where you don’t want to choose between comfort and visibility.