Most motorized shades in a QAV home land somewhere between $1,000 and $2,500 per window. That is a wide range for a reason, and the reason is almost always the fabric.
Here is what actually moves the number, how to tell whether the bid in front of you is honest, and what you are buying when you pay more.
There is a drive-through window, and there is a steakhouse where the beef is dry aged in a room you can see from your table. Both will feed you. Nobody is confused about why one costs what it costs.
Shade fabric works exactly the same way, and it runs a longer scale than most people expect. At one end, a serviceable roll goods fabric that does the job. In the middle, beautiful textured weaves in real colorways that hold up and look considered. At the far end, handwoven material made to the exact width of your window, with no seams and no banding, which is a different world entirely. We wrote about that tier separately in Woven-to-Size: The Shade Detail Designers Notice First.
Nothing else on your shade will move the price as much as this one choice. Not the motor, not the brackets, not the size of the window. The fabric is the meal.
The second decision is what the fabric actually does to daylight. There are four honest categories, and people mix them up constantly.
Light filtering. An open weave that cuts glare and heat while you keep your view. The room stays bright and the outside stays visible. This is what you want on a great room with a mountain view that you have no intention of hiding.
Translucent. Tighter weave, more privacy, and the light comes through as a soft glow rather than a picture. You lose the view, you gain a beautiful quality of light. Wonderful in a bath, a stairwell, or anywhere facing a neighbor.
Room darkening. An opaque fabric that stops light through the material itself. The room goes dim and comfortable. Light still finds its way around the edges of the shade, which surprises people who expected total dark.
Blackout. The same opacity, engineered properly, with the gaps managed at the top and the sides. Genuinely dark. This is the bedroom answer for most people.
And then there is the one we build when someone says they want it truly dark.
That is our name for it, and once you have seen it you understand why. We add side channels that capture the edges of the fabric and we modify the hembar so the bottom seals too. No halo at the sides, no line of light at the sill.
The result is a room where you genuinely cannot tell whether it is two in the afternoon or two in the morning. It is the right call for a primary bedroom where someone works odd hours, for a theater, and for anyone who has ever come home from a long flight and wanted the day to simply stop.
It costs more, because it is more shade. Channels, a modified hembar, and tighter tolerances on the install. Worth knowing about before you assume blackout alone will get you there.
Start with the shade itself. A manual shade, in the fabrics most of our clients actually choose, generally lands between $500 and $900 per window. Fascia, hembar, and bracket selections move that, but fabric moves it most.
Adding a motor typically costs one and a half to three times the manual price. So the same shade, motorized, generally runs $1,000 to $2,500.
That is a wide multiplier, and the spread is not arbitrary. It comes down to what kind of motor you are actually buying.
At the simple end, a motor is a motor. It raises the shade and lowers the shade, usually from a remote, and that is the whole story.
At the other end, the motor is part of your home. It moves with sunrise and sunset, tracks the sun through the afternoon, coordinates with your lighting scenes, closes with the rest of the house at night, and reports back so you know every shade did what it was asked. That is the difference between a shade that opens and a shade that participates.
Then there is the part almost nobody asks about: the warranty. Some motors carry five to seven years. Others carry a lifetime warranty. These motors live above your windows for decades, and reaching one after the fact means scaffolding, a pocket opened up, and a very unpleasant afternoon. That warranty is worth far more than it looks on a quote.
And a warranty is only ever as good as the company standing behind it. A lifetime term from a manufacturer means very little if the firm who installed it stopped answering the phone in year four.
Once fabric and motor are settled, a handful of things adjust the total.
Size. A wide opening needs more fabric, a stronger motor, and heavier hardware. The jump is not linear, and very large windows move meaningfully.
How the shade is concealed. An exposed roll costs the least. A fascia cover is a step up. A recessed ceiling pocket, framed in during construction so the shade vanishes entirely, is the most beautiful answer and the one that has to be planned before drywall.
Hembar and hardware. The bar at the bottom of the shade is visible every day, and the options run from standard to fully custom to match your metals.
Dual shades. A sheer for the day and a blackout for the night, on the same window. Two shades, roughly double.
This is the most useful thing in this article, so we will be direct about it.
If you have two bids for the same shades, you should never see more than about a five percent difference between them. Shades are a specified product. The fabric has a name. The motor has a model number. The hardware is what it is.
So when one bid comes in dramatically lower, it is almost never because someone found a better price. It is because the two quotes are not describing the same thing. Something got substituted, and it is usually one of four places: the fabric is a different tier, the hardware is lighter, the motor is a simpler one with a shorter warranty, or the concealment and install detailing quietly disappeared.
You do not need to be an expert to check. Ask both firms for the fabric name, the motor model, the warranty term, and the hardware finish, in writing. Put them side by side. The gap will explain itself in about ninety seconds.
A shade that costs thirty percent less is not a deal. It is a different shade.
Fair question, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a slogan. Four things.
Someone has to measure, and there is no undo. Every shade is cut and assembled for one specific opening and cannot be returned, resized, or resold. A quarter inch of error is a scrapped shade and a six week delay while the replacement is made. We measure your openings ourselves, in the field, after framing, and if a measurement is ever wrong it is our problem and our cost, not yours. That single sentence is worth more than most of the price difference on this page.
We design the light and the daylight as one system. Most firms sell you shades or sell you lighting. Because we do both, your shades are drawn into the same plan as your fixtures and your scenes. They rise with the sun, ease down as a film begins, and close with the rest of the house at night, all without you touching anything. A shade bought on its own can only ever be a shade. That is how ILLUMINATE is built, and it is why we wrote Should One Team Design Your Lighting?
This is the work we are known for. Shading is not a side line here. It is the discipline the industry has recognized us for most: CE Pro Home of the Year Gold for Best Shade Control in 2025, Crestron's Global Best Shading award, Crestron Best Shading Application in 2025, and a CE Pro Silver for Best Shade Controls in 2024. You are not paying for a company learning shades on your home.
We are still here in year eight. Two decades, more than seven hundred homes, and a Client Care team whose entire job is the years after the install. Motors fail eventually. Fabrics get replaced. Homes change hands. The value of a warranty, and of the person who honors it, only becomes obvious long after the invoice is paid.
Fabric selection is genuinely hard, because a sample in your hand looks nothing like the same material stretched across a window with afternoon sun behind it.
QAV works alongside some of the finest interior designers in Colorado, and if you have one on your project we will work directly with them. If you do not, our own team does this every week and will happily guide you through it. Either way, you should be seeing real samples, in your own light, before anything gets ordered.
The earlier the better, and for one specific reason: pockets, wiring, and side channels all want to be planned before the drywall goes up. Shades added later can still be beautiful, they simply have fewer options.
Bring us in during design and the shades disappear into the architecture the way they should, because daylight is light too, and it deserves the same intention as every fixture in the house.
Most motorized shades in a QAV home land between $1,000 and $2,500 per window. The same shade without a motor generally runs $500 to $900. Fabric selection moves that number more than anything else.
Typically one and a half to three times the price of the same shade manual. The spread depends on whether you are buying a simple motor that raises and lowers, or one that tracks the sun, coordinates with your lighting, and reports its status back to the home.
Light filtering keeps your view while cutting glare. Translucent gives privacy and a soft glow but no view. Room darkening uses an opaque fabric but still leaks light around the edges. Blackout manages those edges too and is genuinely dark.
It is our name for a fully sealed blackout shade. We add side channels that capture the edges of the fabric and modify the hembar so the bottom seals as well. No halo at the sides, no line of light at the sill, and no way to tell what time it is.
You should never see more than about five percent difference between two bids for the same shades. Shades are a specified product, so a much lower number almost always means something was substituted: a different fabric tier, lighter hardware, a simpler motor with a shorter warranty, or the concealment and install detailing.
Usually four things. Who measures your openings and who eats the cost when a measurement is wrong, since shades are made to order and cannot be returned. Whether the motor is a simple one or a smart one, and whether it carries five years or a lifetime. Whether the shades are designed into your lighting or bought on their own. And whether the firm will still be answering the phone in year eight, because a warranty is only as good as the company standing behind it.
