Solar Screens for Your Skylight

There is a lot to love about having a skylight in your home. The natural light it offers and extra warmth in the winter time are just a couple of the great advantages that quickly come to mind.

However, in the summer time, especially in warm climates, a skylight can be a portal of extra heat and light that can not only make your house hotter, but the UV rays from the sun shining through the skylight can damage flooring, furniture and more.

Solar Screens for Skylight

Here at SolarScreenOutlet.com, we often get customers looking for a way to solve their skylight problem. Often, people want the benefits of the skylight (ie natural light, reduced power bill), but want to eliminate the drawbacks. A skylight solar screen is a great way to go.

Mounting on the Outside

For the best heat blocking benefit, you want to attach a framed solar screen to the outside of the skylight. This is doable in most cases where your skylight is flat (not a bubble type skylight).

For this scenario, you can order a Custom Solar Screen or Custom Solar Screen Kit and attach it to the outside of the skylight using one of our several mounting methods.

Mounting on the Inside

If you can’t access the outside of the home or building to mount a solar screen on the exterior, then you’ll have to put a screen on the inside. This isn’t as effective at blocking heat because it’s best to have the screen on the outside to block the heat from the glass and permeating through.

But mounting a solar screen on the inside of your skylight will still give you some heat blocking benefit because it reduces the amount of light coming into the room.

Mounting on the inside isn’t really much different than mounting on the outside. You can order a Custom Solar Screen or Custom Solar Screen Kit and attach it to the outside of the skylight using one of our several mounting methods. I really like the 3M Dual Lock for this method.

Bubble Skylight Solar Screen

If your skylight is rounded (like a bubble) on either the inside or outside, it’s probably best to mount a screen on the side that isn’t bubbled. But if you can only put a screen on the side that is bubbled, and that side is the exterior, I’d suggest using some 2×2 pieces of wood as spacers.

Cut the 4 different 2×2 wood pieces (one for each corner) just long enough so that the screen can be mounted above the bubble. The screen can be screwed directly into the ends of the four 2×2 pieces of wood in each corner. And then the wood pieces can be attached around the skylight so that the solar screen sits above the bubble skylight.

If you can only mount on the inside and the inside is bubbled, I suggest getting some Bulk Solar Screen Fabric and cut it down to the size of your skylight (you might want to over cut it by an inch or two since the skylight is rounded). The fabric can be easily cut with sharp scissors or a sharp utility knife.

You can attach the fabric-only solar screen to the inside bubble skylight using suction cups. We don’t sell suction cups anymore, but you can find similar suction cups on eBay here. The suction cups come with pilot holes and pins so you can cut a small slit in the solar screen fabric where you want each suction cup to be attached. Then push the pin through the fabric and into the pilot hole on the suction cup.

Then mount the screen directly to the glass using the suction cups. Easy peasy.

Shop for Solar Screens Online

For more information on each of our solar screen products, head on over to the Shop Our Products page and have a look around. Reach out to us via live chat or email us here if you have any questions.