What else... Rainfall. How much over the whole of the year, and when in the year. How much mist? How high are you above sea level? Does your property face the sun (South, for you) or are you shaded by hills, buildings, whatever, and don't see the sun until later in the day? Does the frost take it's time about melting, even when it's sunny? When is your first/last frost of significance (the one that terminates the tomatoes or mushies the young bean plants)? Is your soil acid, or alkaline or neutral? 6,5,4 is tending acid. 8,9 is tending alkaline. 6.5-7.5 is around the neutral range. You can buy a home test kit from your garden centre or farmers' supply depot. With maples and cherries, I'd guess at moderately acid - especially if you have pines and native rhododendrons in your woods/bush. How deep is the topsoil, and does it dry out over the summer? Do you have boggy patches in the woods, or is it mostly well-drained after the heavy rains? How dense are the roots in the area where you might want to have planting pockets for treasures? And what sort of shade??? Do the trees cast shadows sprinkled with patches of light on a sunny day? (Dappled light.) Or does it look as gloomy as a winter day when you go in on a summer's day? (Dense shade) Dry shade is the sort of thing you get on the north side of the house under the eaves. Rarely gets natural moisture. A useful zone for drying out bulbs over summer, but can be a gardening challenge. Hope that's helped a bit.

That's a good question. I guess I need to go over to the neighbor's house and look into my bathroom window from their upstairs hall window. (We live in a close-in, first subrurb of NYC, so houses are close together here.) I should also mention that the bathroom has white subway tile and a marble basketweave floor -- I am trying to achieve a 1920s style.

Thanks Chispa - you are so right..sorry I've been looking at SO many different kinds and bouncing between these and the others which were cellular. I'm beginning to doubt the dark color now that a few have pointed them out as not working too well with this room. Maybe wood blinds? I can do 2.5 inch faux wood blinds in a white? This would match the trim we have (the back door still needs painting of trim). If I did this, then it would save some money since I would not need to replace the one above the sink.

I just installed a Levolor transformations shade. It has blue light filering fabric on the top and cream room-darkening fabric on the bottom. It has a blue header and blue pull bars. It is just as I ordered it. But I'm having a problem falling in love with it. (Maybe it's because I don't like window coverings.) You can adjust how much of each fabric you want to show. Kind of like an adjustable colorblocking effect. I thought the blue could be a pretty extension of my white wood valance. The cream would make a nice backdrop for the TV which is partially in front of the window. It's effective at removing the glare from the TV which is one of the reasons I bought it. I guess I was a little disappointed in the room darkening fabric. It is more yellow than the corresponding light filtering color which was beautiful. But I don't know if I would have picked a different color had I known. Or maybe it's the graduated pattern of the pleats that bugs me a little. They are more scrunched up near the bottom of each bar. Or maybe I should have picked two colors that were more similar. I don't think they let you pick the same color for both sections since they often don't match that well. I liked it better after I hung some of my pictures on the wall, because they repeated the colors and balanced out the color distribution. The thing I love about these shades is the small profile. When they are completely retracted under my white wood valance, there is only 3" blue-bordered cream stripe under the valance. Very clean and doesn't block the view. If I extend the top a bit, I get a pretty blue stripe across the top of the window. I needed color up there since I removed the fabric valance I had before I trimmed out the window. I also like being able to lighten up the room by exposing more light filtering shade. (I did not do top-down-bottom-up because the window would have let it too much light creating a glare.) So I think after I frame it a bit with more decor, I won't mind it so much. Functionally it is perfect. But it seems a little "off" aesthetically. Is it the color combination, or the fabric differences (room-darkening vs light-filtering), or the variations in pleats, or the color-blocking concept, or the cream room-darkening color, or should I just have gone with light-filtering in one color? I just lowered it to the light-filtering blue all the way, and I think I like that better, but there is a smell amount of glare on the TV. Do you have these 2-in-1 types of cellular shades? Do you like them? What colors did you pick?