What’s the Difference Between Voile and Screen Roller Blind Fabric?
When choosing a fabric for your blinds, deciding how much light you want to pass through the blind (during the day and night) should be the biggest determining factor.
Too much light streaming in throughout the day can cause glare and overheating from sunlight, whilst light pollution coming in at night can disrupt sleep and inhibit privacy.
However, there’s a balance between keeping out excess glare and creating privacy, while still retaining a view out of the window and taking advantage of natural daylight to reduce the need for artificial lighting.
There are two popular choices for this that offer very different benefits: Voiles and Screen fabrics.
Both fabrics will provide a level of light and glare control, but there are a few key differences between the two types that might make one option much more suitable for your needs.
So, what is the difference between a voile and a screen fabric?
Voile fabrics
Voile fabrics, sometimes referred to as ‘sheers’, are very translucent and allow a view through the fabric. They let a lot of natural light through the fabric whilst diffusing glare.
Voile fabrics wouldn’t be ideal if you were looking to create shade, as the amount of light that comes through would barely make the room any darker. Voiles tend to just diffuse the worst of the glare, for example on a TV screen, but don’t make the room darker.
Voiles still allow a view through the fabric but add some privacy. During the day, most people won’t be able to look into your home through the blind unless they were stood right up to the window.
However, when your internal lights are on in the evening and it’s darker outside than inside, voile fabrics will allow people to see into your home, so that is something to bear in mind.
For this reason, Voile fabrics tend to be used in conjunction with more opaque shading. A common pairing is a voile blind and a dimout blind in the same window, or even a voile curtain with a blackout blind. This way you still let in natural light during the day whilst getting privacy at night.
Screen fabrics
Screen fabrics are always one of the most popular choices for roller blind fabric in both the commercial and residential sectors. A screen fabric is one that is woven together to provide light control whilst retaining a view out.
Screen fabrics are effective at reducing glare and harsh light, whilst still providing the user with a view out of the window and access to natural daylight.
Sunscreen fabrics are available from multiple fabric suppliers and come in a huge variety of colours and opennesses. The openness factor is expressed as a percentage and indicates how open the fabric weave is. Many screens, such as our Spectrum 5010 fabric, are available in a 1%, 3%, 5% and 10% openness. However, there are some speciality screens which come in 2%, 4% and 25% openness, so there are options available for almost any requirement.
The key difference between a screen fabric and a voile is the amount of light control you achieve. Even a 10% screen fabric will block a significant amount more light and glare than a voile fabric will.
Also, with screen fabrics, the colour of the fabric has an impact on the performance.
White screen fabrics are more reflective than darker colours, but they’re also much less absorbent, meaning lighter-coloured screens let more light through. If you imagine a light box that you might see in a photography studio – they usually use a white fabric as it lets light through but it also diffuses it so it’s not as harsh. White screen fabrics work in the same way.
Darker screen fabrics are much better at absorbing light than lighter colours, so you not only get less light coming through, but it also gives you a better view through the fabric.
Screen fabrics also offer privacy during the day when it’s darker inside than it is outside. However, at night when it’s darker outside than it is inside, the opposite is true – you won’t be able to see out but anyone outside will be able to see in.
Our recommendations
At Umbra we work with a huge range of fabric suppliers to make sure we have a solution for every project.
Over the years we’ve found a range of light-filtering voiles and dimout fabrics that we recommend to customers for both their performance and their aesthetic appeal. Here are a few of our favourites:
To find out more about fabric properties, our fabric range and which fabric is best for you, check out our other blog posts:
To speak to an expert about your requirements please get in touch: