A single French door flanked by two narrow sidelights doesn't leave you many good options. She didn't want anything mounted on the door itself, and the sidelights were too narrow for most standard shades to work properly. This wasn't a job with an obvious answer.
The solution: one continuous vertical cellular shade sized to span the door and both sidelights as a single piece, rather than trying to treat three separate openings three separate ways.
Why "Standard" Doesn't Work Here
Most shade lines are built around single, standard-width windows. A door-plus-sidelight combination doesn't fit that mold, and forcing three separate treatments onto three unevenly sized openings usually looks exactly like what it is- patchwork fix.
Why One Piece Was the Right Call
Treating the whole opening as one continuous surface let the door stay completely usable and clean, while the sidelights got real coverage instead of being ignored because "nothing fits."
Not Perfect — Right
It wasn't a flawless solution in the abstract sense; a custom shape like this always involves some trade-off. But for this door, in this house, it was exactly right. Which is really the whole standard a solution should be held to.
Getting Started
If you've got a door-and-sidelight combination you've been putting off because nothing seems to fit, that's usually solvable with the right approach.
