How to Install a Top Down Shade

Installing a Top-Down Window Shade is Easy

Hey it's like from blindsonline.com I'd like to show you guys how to install a cellular shade that has the top-down bottom-up feature. As you know that is one of our options on the website, and it's one of our more popular options.

So I'd like to show you number 1, how the shade is installed, and also just how it operates.

The first thing I'd like you to do is unravel the shade. You will notice of the shade is going to have 2 operating cords one on the left and one on the right. One of the cords going to operate the shade from the top down the other from the bottom up. It's also going to have 3 rails. You're going to have your bottom rail, what we call the floating rail which is in the center. And your top rail which is the head rail, which actually gets mounted okay.

Now were going to show you how to mount this as an inside mount. However if you do decide to mount this is an outside mount the only difference is that you will be amounting your brackets right on the window trim, or just above the window trim okay. So that's really the only difference.

So once you have your shade unpacked I'd like you to just put that aside, grabbed the mounting brackets. These are the mounting brackets for the top-down bottom-up shade. And these are universal. These can either be used for inside mounting, or outside mounting okay. Outside mounting would look something like this, inside mounting were going to place it straight into the frame.

So let's take a look at the inside mount. The inside mount seems to be a very popular way folks are putting these in today. We're going to grab a screw and the screw gun. We have one of the mounting brackets, and bring it up to the inside of the frame just like so. Bring it so that front of the bracket which is this portion, is flush with the front of the window frame and that the little Phillips head screrw is facing downward toward the floor okay. If that screw is facing down you know you have the bracket positioned correctly.

Shoot one screw directly through the center of the bracket and make sure it's secure okay. We're going to do that both on the left-hand side and the right hand side. You notice I've spaced this about 3 inches over on each side, that's about right and will provide you with the correct number of brackets based upon the width of the shade. Now you can see that both brackets are in place, once those brackets are in place I'm going to bring the shade up to the mounting brackets. Now what I'd like you to do is release the shade a little bit from the top, that's your right-hand cord drop it down a little bit, that's going to give us access to the top rail or the head rail which is the rail that gets mounted into the brackets.

You'll notice there are a couple of pleats that hang down from the head rail, we call that our bumper okay. What the bumper does is it blocks the light gap when the floating rail meets the top rail okay. It's there for a purpose. Now when you bring this rail over to the brackets I want to make sure that you don't catch this bumper in the bracket, so make sure you pull it down a little bit. And when you're fitting this into the bracket, I'd like you to fit the very pointy part of the front of the bracket into the little groove okay, that's on the head rail right here. So we're going to try and fit to that pointy part in the groove here. We're going to do the same thing on the opposite side, once we have it in place I want you to align this rail so that it's even on each side. We have an even amount of space on the left than we do on the right.

Once we have an even amount of space locate the bracket give the head rail a little tap toward the back, that will just temporarily seat that head rail into the bracket and hold it in place while you grab a Phillips head screwdriver okay. Because the last portion of this install is tightening up on that little Phillips head screw that's on the bottom of the bracket that's right here. Were going to tighten this up now and that's the last part of the installation. You want to make sure that's a good and tight so that the shade doesn't fall out when operating it okay. We tighten up this crew and guess what that's all there is to it, we've completed the installation of the top-down bottom-up.

Now what I'd like to do is take some time and demonstrate how the top-down bottom-up shade works okay. If you are ordering for the first time could be a little bit confusing so I want you guys to just take a peek and notice of that, you always have one cord that's longer than the other cord that's normal, because it's going to be opposite sides. When you drop the shade down from the top, you will be operating the right chord Bring it to the inside of the shade you unlock it and you lower the shade to wherever you'd like it to be. That's the top-down operation. Now yes there will be a couple of strings exposed in the window frame this is not a magic shade, they haven't invented that one yet. So when you drop it down from the top you will see a couple of cords exposed. That's what supports the floating rim.

If you'd like to operate from the bottom up you can raise this all the way up, you can see how the bumper closes the light gap on top. Grab the left-hand cord and pull it up from the bottom. There will be no exposed cords when you lift it up from the bottom just like an ordinary shade. But you'll notice that this string gets longer as you pull it up from the bottom and this string gets shorter as you drop it down from the top. Now what I would suggest, we're going to provide you with cord cleats with the shade. The cord cleat is going to get mounted either to the side molding just like this with one screw, or off the side of the molding like this it's your preference.

I would suggest that you put it outside of the reach of young children so that when you want to can easily just hang the string up like so, keep it off the floor keep it away from kids and it will look a whole lot neater than hanging down. So we will supply you with two cord cleats one for each side be sure to install those very important.

Okay so just to review one more time. You have your left string which operates the shade like an ordinary shade from the bottom, and then we have the top cord that is going to drop the shade down from top. These come in handy for areas where you need added privacy like bathrooms. You may want to be able to see outside, and still keep the privacy in the room. That's one of the biggest features of the shades. It has a lot of flexibility. You can even get creative if you want. You can pick it up from the bottom and just have the center part if you like. It's really up to you but it's a very flexible shade something that's very popular right now and I just wanted to give you guys the lowdown on just how the shade operates.

Like you do have any additional questions on how a top-down bottom-up shade operates, my name is Mike from blindsonline.com. Feel free to call me anytime and thanks for watching.

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