We recently added a total gamechanger to our home: Somfy motorized window shades.
And let me tell you, once you have your shades motorized in your home, there is no going back. It’s THE BEST.
Somfy provides motorized systems for shades or motorized curtains. So in order to have Somfy motorized shades in your home, you’d start by looking for a local dealer here, and picking out window coverings that work with Somfy motors through them.
We had Designers Resource come out to take a look at our upstairs rooms where we wanted motorized window treatments. This was super helpful because they were able to give us suggestions for different window coverings, show us samples in person, and explain the installation process and options for the Somfy motors.
We ended up choosing neutral roller shades in a light beige color with some texture, that could be done in either a sheer material or as a blackout roller shade.
We have the blackout roller version in all of the bedrooms and went with the light filtering version for a window located about the stairs in our landing area.
Controlling your Somfy Motorized Shades
There are several different ways you can control your Somfy shades.
Remote control – Your Somfy motorized shades will come with a programmable remote control for each room. Since our bedroom has one large window, one medium window, and it’s connected to our master bathroom with a large window, we have one remote that controls each window separately or all three windows all at once.
App – You can also control your shades from the Somfy TaHoma app on your phone. From here, you’re able to set up and label each window and just tap the one you want to open or close.
Schedule – Now, THIS is what I really love about our motorized shades—being able to set them on a schedule. This just feels like peak luxury status, unlocked.
Using the app on your phone, you can create custom schedules that automatically control the opening and closing of your shades.
We have ours set to automatically open at 7:30 am on weekdays and 8 am on weekends.
Waking up to natural sunlight rather than to an alarm clock has been so lovely! I still set my alarm on my phone just in case and that’s usually what actually gets me out of bed, but typically I’m gently woken up before my alarm goes off by the light in our room.
We also have our shades set to automatically close in the evenings.
I have noticed that lately, sometimes one of our shades won’t open/close along with the rest of the shades that are all set on a schedule. Not sure why and it hasn’t been one shade in particular. Sometimes one just gets left behind. 🥲
Somfy smart home system
Another huge perk of installing Somfy’s motorized shades is that you can connect them to your smart home system like Amazon Alexa or Google Home.
We haven’t set ours up yet with Google Home because the remote control and app have been so convenient, we haven’t felt the need to. But if you prefer having voice control options through your smart home device, you can!
This particular window was amazing to get motorized blinds on because of its location over the bathtub.
Previously, there were some pretty ugly blinds on this window and if I wanted to open or close them, I’d have to climb into and over the bathtub in order to get to the strings. Which meant that we pretty much just left this window closed all the time.
Now that I’m able to easily control this shade in our bathroom by remote or the app on my phone, we’re able to have this window open during the day to let in beautiful, natural light.
Besides having this motorized shade on a schedule that opens it every morning to let in light, I also have it on a schedule that’s synced up with my workout classes—when my workouts on Monday/Wednesday evenings end at 6:30pm, this shade in the bathroom also closes so I have privacy and can hop right in the shower. Magic!
Install process
The installation was done by the Designers Resource team and was pretty smooth and quick! They were done within a few hours.
The only snag we hit was getting the TaHoma device set up so we could control our shades via the app. Omied was eventually able to figure it out and it required setting up a new wifi at a different GHz speed of 2.4. I’m not going to pretend to know what that means or that this was possible (lol ya learn something new every day), but just know that if you have issues setting yours up, it’s something to look into!
Other Somfy products
In addition to their motorized interior shades and blinds, Somfy also has options for outdoor awnings, screens, and pergolas. This would be perfect for our backyard space!
Somfy also has sun sensors, which are great for energy savings! Your motorized interior shades will adapt their behavior to external conditions to help you to control your energy costs much more efficiently.
How much do Somfy motorized shades cost?
If you’ve ever done custom window treatments before, you know that it can get expensive pretty quickly, so I wanted to give you an upfront idea of costs for a project like this.
The total cost for our project was $8,000. This included roller shades and Somfy motors for:
- 1 large window in our bedroom (this is a very large window that spans almost the entire wall)
- 1 medium window in our bedroom
- 1 medium window in our bathroom
- 1 medium window in our guest room
- 1 medium window in our landing area
I already had window coverings in my office and didn’t feel the need to get roller shades in there, and we skipped window treatments for the bonus room as we were in the process of renovating it and still figuring out our needs in there.
How do you charge Somfy motorized shades, and how long do the batteries last?
Somfy motors are powered by a rechargeable, built-in Lithium-Ion battery. There’s a removable charging cable, so you don’t have to take the blinds or battery down off the wall to charge it.
When you’re running low on battery, you’ll see an LED Low battery indicator and the app will let you know as well.
We were told that the expected battery life for a motor is six months to a year, depending on how often you use your blinds.
That’s it for my Somfy motorized shades review! As you can probably tell, we love them.
Seriously, I’m never going back to manually operated window shades again!
Huge thank you to Somfy for gifting us our new motorized shades!
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Elise Armitage is an entrepreneur and founder of What The Fab, a travel + lifestyle blog based in California. At the beginning of 2019, Elise left her corporate job at Google to chase her dreams: being an entrepreneur and helping women find fabulous in the everyday. Since then, she’s launched her SEO course Six-Figure SEO, where she teaches bloggers how to create a passive revenue stream from their website using SEO. Featured in publications like Forbes, Elle, HerMoney, and Real Simple, Elise is a firm believer that you can be of both substance and style.
