Of all the things you might expect to bring home from a museum - great memories, photographs of beautiful art, whatever you got when the gift shop ambushed you on your way out - inspiration for window coverings probably is not one of them. Here’s the thing though, museums have to plan the way they display art very carefully, and this means not just how they arrange art in the space but everything about the space itself, right down to the window treatments. The solar roller shades in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece may take a subtle back seat to the art they protect, but that’s what makes them great - they protect. They enhance without domineering. They allow the outside to come into the Museum without also inviting in all of the outside things you don’t want in your museum, or your home.

Take UV light, for example. Solar roller shades come in several different weaves, 3%, 5%, or 10% openness, which refers to how tightly the material of the shade is woven. The more loosely woven the material, the more you can see through it. Even with the loosest weave, however, solar roller shades still block 100% of UV light, protecting the artifacts the Museum displays from fading, yellowing, or the other harmful effects of UV rays.

This alone makes them the best material for light filtering, but the density of the weave provides other benefits as well. Solar roller shades can block the UV, but still allow natural light to come into the museum. After all, these artifacts are often more than 2000 years old, they’d probably like a break from staring down the Greek sun. Who could blame them?

Solar roller shades don’t just let in sunlight, however. Loosely woven roller shades are sheer, letting the view outside the museum to come inside as well. This is particularly crucial for the Acropolis Museum, as the Acropolis itself is every bit as important as the artifacts displayed inside. It’s not usually how we think of indoor/outdoor living, but solar roller shades nonetheless allow visitors to appreciate both the artifacts and the place where the artifacts came from, which other window coverings would struggle to achieve.

The Acropolis Museum, along with many other commercial buildings, undoubtedly chose solar roller shades for all of these reasons, but just because roller shades are frequently used in industrial settings doesn’t mean all their benefits are not just as applicable to the individual home. The UV protection that keeps ancient artifacts safe for the years to come can also be used to protect personal items, or persons for that matter.

According to cancer.org, windows block most UVB rays but allow more UVA rays to come through, bringing with them the potential for damage even without burning. And although your skin might not burn, your papers definitely can. Picture a newspaper left in a windowsill for even as short a period as a week, and you’ll have a pretty graphic example of how much damage UV light can cause your personal possessions. Further, says Artcareinc.com, paper is not the only material subject to UV damage; it also causes many dyes or pigments to fade or change colors. This means not just whatever art you happen to have around the house, but also the dye in your carpet or furniture.

With UV protection comes another advantage; by filtering light, roller shades can help keep the temperature in your house down. The website weatheronline.co.uk reports that the UV index, a measurement of damaging UV radiation reaching the surface of the Earth, reaches 8-9 in Greece, a number approaching Los Angeles’ average of 10-11 in June. To create the sense of an indoor/outdoor space that the Acropolis Museum needs, the Museum features huge, floor to ceiling windows, which also means a huge, floor-to-ceiling greenhouse effect.

The same is true of your home, the more unfiltered light there is beating down on your windows, (and the bigger those windows are) the hotter your home will become. And as much as indoor/outdoor living might be trending right now, no one wants to live in the summer heat inside their house. That’s one of those things better left outside, where you can admire it through your roller shades with a cool drink in hand, and venture out only once the sun has taken its UV rays and gone on its merry way to bother the rest of the planet. Roller shades can be installed on the inside or outside of the house, but wherever they are installed the UV filtering they provide can cut down on heating and cooling bills, ultimately saving you money.

The unique way that solar roller shades create indoor/outdoor spaces, even when closed, lets the exterior of your house be just as much a part of the home as the interior. Chicology offers solar roller shades in a variety of colors and weaves to allow you to order the material most suited to your needs, but no matter which material you opt for, rest assured knowing that all of our shades offer complete protection from fading, damage, and heat.

In addition to a variety of ready-made shades, Chicology can also custom design solar roller shades in many colors to ensure the right fit, and to help you achieve that look that solar roller shades are exclusively good at; offering protection and blending seamlessly into the rest of your home, while also bringing all the best parts of the outside in. All the design elements outside of your home can become part of the aesthetic of your house as a whole. So go ahead and admire all that landscaping you did in the backyard, knowing that your investment out there can be a part of your house even when you’re not actually outside.