This article is reprinted from the review of gb on Amazon.
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The customer shared a detailed review of their experience with Graywind's shades. They initially bought one test shade before purchasing 15 more Zigbee light filtering and blackout shades in white, along with a 16-channel remote due to the quality and integrity of Graywind's products. The review covers aspects like fabric / material quality, band alignment, lighting differences between light filtering and blackout shades, battery life, motor sound, installation process, remote control satisfaction, SmartThings compatibility, packaging quality, and commendable customer service from Graywind. Overall, the reviewer highly recommends Graywind for their great zebra shades and excellent customer service.
Purchase information :
Graywind Motorized Zebra Sheer Blinds
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 stars
Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2021
Color: Classic - White
Material Type: 1 - Rechargeable Smart Motor
I started out with one test shade before committing (like many others, I was scared about the risk and return difficulty if it hadn't worked out). I loved the quality and Graywind's integrity so much, I ended up buying 15 more Zigbee (ZF) light filtering and blackout shades in white, and the 15-channel remote. Both types of these zebra shades look great and work wonderfully. Highly recommend!! Long version:
FABRIC / MATERIAL
Get the swatches!! It' ll help you very much. Before finding Graywind, I had ordered fabric swatches from the major brands at our home improvement stores and from a couple online vendors. Those "fabrics" all felt like rigid paper, they were fraying at the edges, and didn' t seem like they would last with everyday up/downs and direct sunlight over the years. Graywind' s fabric samples, however, were impressive. The materials are flexible, don' t crease easily, and didn't show signs of easy fraying. The solid bands feel smooth and thin (but durable) for the light filtering, and smooth and thick for the blackout. The sheer parts feel a bit more rigid than your typical soft sheer curtains, so they may crease if someone/thing keeps folding it repeatedly. After 6 months, I haven' t had any issues with the fabric fraying on the shades that completely open/close or partially open.
ALIGNMENT OF BANDS
For the most part, Graywind did a great job at band alignment between windows (this was a concern I had about buying zebra-style shades). The only caveat was that they would align the bands for only same-length shades. So if you have different sized windows side-by-side in the same room, be aware there may be a misaligned outlier (maybe try asking if they could make them all match).
Alignment in the sense that you can superimpose the darkening bands over each other, was also pretty spot-on—with the exception of 2 (out of 16) being about 10 degrees crooked. One thing that was kind of a bummer is that the blocking bands on light filtering shades are much smaller than the blocking bands on the blackouts (e.g. 3" vs 4.5"). So if the difference will bother you, keep that in mind.
LIGHTING
For some rooms, I got the blackout shades in the rooms to block out light or to avoid our shadows from being seen if someone were standing outside at night. For the rest, I got the light filtering shades because I didn't want to lose brightness but wanted privacy from the creepy neighbor (fyi if you see your shadow on these shades at night, people outside will also be able to see it if that's a concern for you). I used a light meter to test the lighting changes with direct sunlight in both shade types while standing 6ft from the front of the shade. With the light filtering shades the lux readings were 199 closed (60% bright), 247 bands aligned (75% bright), 331 fully open (100% bright). With the blackout shades (different room/sun entry) the lux readings were 43 closed (0.3% bright), 5037 bands aligned (39% bright), and 12949 fully open (100% bright).