With something as basic looking as honeycomb shades, the only thing to hardwire or remote or battery......would be a window too high to reach: )

But that's me. Too much money for a basic. These come cordless and I doubt every room needs top down bottom up? Battery would be the most I'd do and only where necessary.

Window treatments, both privacy and anything decorative with them......are part of an overall decorative design scheme. Yours? We have no idea......: ) Nor how many rooms, the actual windows and sizes, etc. But light control and privacy have a lot of options, as does Hunter Douglas.

I can't speak to honeycomb shades, but we do have three 8'x8' sliding doors that have Hunter Douglas roller blinds with one having the very heavy blockout fabric. Our blinds are battery operated and the litium battereis lasted nearly four years before they needed replacement. I was surpsied how long they lasted for such heavy material.

Do the batteries really need to be replaced once or twice a year? We charge the batteries on ours once a year because it requires getting out a ladder. DH vacuums them then also. We have had ours three years and the batteries still work. However, we don't raise and lower ours everyday. The battery operated ones are only on the windows up high that can't be reached and I only open them on cloudy days because there's so much light in the room otherwise. Our blinds are sheer so they just cut back the brightness during the day. We don't need blackout shades in our living room. Plug in sounds like it could be unattractive. Were you going to motorize all of yours? What kind of warranty does HD offer on the mechanism?

We have the HD roller shades with batteries. We charge them once a year, and the cord is long enough that we can charge them without removing them. Pretty easy. Not sure how long they will last. We only have them in our main living space, though - I don't think I'd want motorized blinds everywhere. I WILL say that I would definitely get the hub so you can program them. We have our living space shades programmed to open/close based on the sunrise and sunset. We also have them automatically close during the day so our furniture doesn't fade as fast, but they open in the morning for an hour or so, close for the day, open in the afternoon, and close in the evening at dusk. I love that particular feature.

- Hardwired: this is the cleanest way to do it but if any problems occur in the future, an electrician will have to come to work on it and we may even have to open the walls.

that's also true of your lighting, and how often does one really have problems with that? besides, if you had a battery operated or plug-in system, do you have the knowhow to fix that if it breaks, or would you still have to bring in a pro anyway?

if you have super high ceilings and don't want to deal with tall ladders, I'd go with hard wired.

- Battery operated: it's easy and simple but we will have to change the batteries once or twice a year.

compared to the hundreds of other annoying house maintenance things one has to do, changing batteries is not that big of a deal. if you don't have super high ceilings, I'd want that instead of hard wired.

anj_p makes a good point about her system. it sounds like charging for the HD shades is super easy.

Also if something went wrong with the wiring to one blind, the connector plug for power or battery is the same .... the wires to the Power hub are low voltage ... so you can just buy a battery pack and connect to the previously hardwired blind.

I have motorized shades and I LOVE them. So nice to not physically have to go to every window and manually adjust the shades. Especially nice in bed when I can control the shades.

My windows aren't pecularly high but I don't know anyone with motorized shade who hasn't loved the convenience, Of course I also have many of my lights on the Lutron system and it is also fabulous to be able to turn lights on and off from my iphone.

I did a gut remodel and so I could have gone with hard wired shades if necessary - lord knows the electrician was here and I had other kinds of wiring done like the kind needed for my cable connections so they are in the walls.

Mine have been installed for about 4 years and I have changed the batteries once. Changing them is pretty simple although I just observed :-). It seemed a bit like changing batteries in a flashlight and my friend who did it for me finished five sets in about five minutes.

Hi chispa, what kind of home automation system did you use to tie in the control of your HD Duettes? We will have our AV guys doing our lighting, security and speaker controls as well. Thank you.

I did low voltage lines to all my shades. I'm doing a total Homekit set up with flush iPad hubs in the walls in two locations. This review is very informative about smart shades. One brand of shade has a small solar panel that sticks on the glass to keep the batteries charged.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-smart-blinds/

Thank you Paul F. The only thing that is missing from the nytimes recommendations is that none of those brands has the HD Duettes option - cell within cell in the honeycomb shades. Or did I miss reading it?

Closest is the Graber dual cell. I only looked into shades I could install myself. I'm trying to limit the amount of specialty technicians I'll need to help keep my smarthome running smoothly. Also, I wanted Apple Homekit compatibility and Matter support... no complex Control4 or other control systems.

Or did I miss reading it?

do a keyword search for "duette". you can find what wirecutter has to say about that brand under the "Pro install options" section.

"In our testing, Hunter Douglas’s shades performed excellently and were just as quiet and smooth when opening and closing as the Lutron Serena Shades."

I just finished a project where the owners before did honey comb shades 20 yrs before this owner bought . We removed them at the beginning of the renovation the client thought she might reuse them. They were so filthy the dust collected on the fllor where we layed them until we were finished There is no way in hell I would ever do that type of shade how do you clean them apparently not easily since the rest of the house was quite clean . I love moorized slar shades for heat and UV control they are easy to keep clean let you keep the view and on cludy days roll them up to keep as much natural light as possible As for what type od motorized that depends a lot on the window sizes . I think wired in is the easiest but also the most expensive,

Does anyone have pictures they can share of their blinds, specificly where they're mounted? We're building and have a few windows that are hardwired for shades. Our designers are saying we need these big valances, which I don't care for and don't think would look right in our home. We're building a more rustic type home. I can't seem to find good pictures online. thanks!

Mine are all inside mounted and the standard Daisy White from Hunter Douglas works fine with most standard white paints. I've used them with BM Simply White and now with BM Chantilly Lace. I made sure my windows and trim would have enough space for inside mounted blinds. When open the blind housing blends into the window and trim.

If you have stained trim, then it becomes harder to blend in the blinds, which is the only reason I can think of for a valance.

I'll take a photo tomorrow in the daytime.