Oaktown and dekeoboe, thank you both for your responses. I had difficulty signing back into gardenweb and couldn't access until now. It's a relief to know that others have no problems operating a shade with large dimensions. Reaching a roller shade at 70" would be no problem for me. Dekeoboe, thanks for the heads up about a clutch mechanism. The problem is that I wanted solar shades on a roller shade. A local shade shop tells me that due to the open weave of solar mesh, it is inadvisable to use the material in a roll up shade format. After about a year or two the mesh at the bottom would begin to pull apart. That makes sense. Code for my gulf coast area requires that glazing needs to be LowE3-366 glass or an equivalent glass by another glass manufacturer. My goal is to further filter out uv and infra red rays beyond what the glass provides to eliminate fading as much as possible. There is not enough side wall space for fabric. I need some view retained through whatever is used as will feel too closed in with regular solid shades. It's a problem I'm still researching.

We live by a lake with a south view thus getting a lot of sun in the afternoon. We were looking at roller shades with a 3% openness but am wondering if that would block the sun enough. Thinking also of going with a light filtering (cloth like material... don’t like the paper) cellular shade. We think the roller shades look better for a lake Home. However,the cellular would insulate better... live in cold minnesota ... but it seems to look to formal. Not sure what to do.

Pretty house, I has the same issues as I have 9 front facing windows in all sorts of different rooms, and I decided to do mirror tint on the front facing windows, not only does it cut down on the afternoon sun/glare but it made it an option to use different window treatments.

Thank you, Patricia! The bed was over by the window, but we just moved it to the other side to make space for exercise equipment by the window -- including a bike. (My husband says he will NOT bike looking at a bed, so we flipped the room around.) I agree that the bed should be where the bookshelves are, but the bookshelves came built-in with the house and it doesn't seem worth it to move them at this point. The entire room was Ikea blue and yellow with a green and brown desk, so painting it white was a HUGE improvement! We are looking for some kind of blind that will provide privacy so that the neighbors aren't watching us exercise, and for when our kids come home and sleep in the room. But it doesn't need to be particularly light-blocking. In fact, we would prefer for the light to filter in.