Community Forums

texasfuse · 11-21-2014, 11:00 AM

I am in the process of ordering a new trailer and have the option of ordering the slow rise day/night shades made by Irvine Shade and Door out of Elkhart, Indiana instead of the normal pleated shades. Does anyone have any experience with this brand? They are similar to the MCD shades in that they have a solar screen and a night shade that also pulls down and I am told they are of similar quality, but are somewhat less expensive. They are obviously mounted on two different rollers, and I am told they come in high end units like DRV, Airstream, Tiffin, Redwood, etc.
Any comments would be appreciated.

Rob_Fla · 11-22-2014, 10:06 AM

We have the Irvine Shade and Door roller shades on our Redwood.
So far they have worked good, seem to be decent quality and we like them.
I have seen the MCD brand on other RVs but did not look close enough to tell if there is a difference in the two brands.
We do like the roller shades much better than the pleated shades we had in our last RV.

texasfuse · 11-22-2014, 10:19 AM

Perfect! Thanks so much for the feedback. I have one more question..... Do you find that you leave the solar shades down most of the time during the day and then just lower the night shades at dark? Or do you find that you really do not use the solar shades much during the day?

Loren Rice · 11-22-2014, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob_Fla

We have the Irvine Shade and Door roller shades on our Redwood.
So far they have worked good, seem to be decent quality and we like them.
I have seen the MCD brand on other RVs but did not look close enough to tell if there is a difference in the two brands.
We do like the roller shades much better than the pleated shades we had in our last RV.

I wounder specificity why you like your roller shades better. Is it because you have less light coming in? Or maybe the pull strings in mh's are a problem.

I remember as a young person growing up with roller shades in our home and thought it was a vast improvement when the pleated ones came out.

Loren

AFChap · 11-22-2014, 10:25 AM

We have the MCD dual roller shades and use just the solar shade quite often on the sunny side of the coach. We also have them on the windshield and that is our privacy screen during daytime allowing us to see out but anyone outside cannot see in.

Rob_Fla · 11-23-2014, 06:27 AM

We use the Day / Solar shades during the day usually since the sun is quite bright here in the southeast.
If it is raining or overcast we have both shades up.

We like the Roller Shades better than the Pleated Shades due to no strings to mess with and for the pleated shades to work right we had to keep the string tension adjusted.
Also sometimes the long pleated shades we had (approx. 5 feet long) would not fold back up correctly sometimes and we had to help the pleats.
If the Pleated Shades were near our bed or a back or sides of a couch we always worried about hitting them with a pillow or something, it was pretty easy to bend or crease the pleats.
We had the "Black Out" Night Pleated shades which are heaver material than many of the pleated shades I has seen and they would bend / crease easier.

wingnut60 · 11-23-2014, 08:20 AM

Welcome | Irvine Shade and Door : Irvine Shade and Door

At least they aren't owned by Lippert--yet.

Joe

texasfuse · 11-23-2014, 08:58 AM

From what I understand, the MCD shades are the highest quality. But, I think they are also the most expensive by far. Supposedly, the solar shades manufactured by MCD utilize a proprietary technology that gives you a greater viewing angle so you can see the outside better when viewed from inside the trailer, but people still cannot see in from the outside.

Ours will be of the manual type as opposed to having the motorized shades.

Loren Rice · 11-24-2014, 10:30 AM

Thank you all for the information as to why you like the roller type shades. One more question I have is, that we like to camp where sometimes there is a lot of yard lights -- so I'm interested in know if you can have the installation eliminate nearly 100% of light either coming in or for that matter whether or not your lights being on inside the mh not visible from outside. at night.

Loren

AFChap · 11-24-2014, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loren Rice

I'm interested in know if you can have the installation eliminate nearly 100% of light either coming in or for that matter whether or not your lights being on inside the mh not visible from outside. at night.

Yes, pretty much 100% either way.