If you've spent any time on a complex commercial project like a hospital, a university, or a high-rise office tower, you already know how many systems are competing for attention before the building ever opens its doors. Everything from building automation systems, security, lighting, HVAC, IT Network infrastructure, and AV infrastructure are vying for a place, and somewhere near the bottom of the checklist is motorized window coverings.
That needs to change.
After more than a decade working with AV integrators, architects, engineers, and designers across North America, I've watched the same story play out too many times: The shading conversation happens too late, electrical coordination is missed, the wrong wiring gets run, or the project is value engineered due to change orders for new electrical coordination. As a result, someone ends up scrambling to make a battery-powered solution work in a space that deserves something far better. The good news? The industry is shifting, and the integrators and architects leading that shift are delivering better projects, stronger client relationships, and a growing competitive edge.
Here are three things every commercial or residential integrator and architect needs to understand about motorized shading in 2026.
1. Shading and Lighting Are Partners, Not the Same Discipline
There's a tendency in our industry to bundle lighting and shading together as if they're two sides of the same coin. In a way, they are. Both systems exist to manage light within a space but treating them as interchangeable is where projects start to go sideways.
Lighting designers think in terms of task light, accent light, and ambient light. They're creating mood, supporting occupant comfort, and increasingly, addressing circadian health — particularly in spaces like office buildings where many people spend the majority of their waking hours, or hospitals and healthcare facilities where light plays a critical role in worker and patient well-being.
Automated shading, by contrast, is the primary daylight management system during daytime hours. It's managing solar heat gain through those increasingly large commercial windows. It's controlling glare on a conference room screen at 10 a.m. It's protecting occupant comfort without requiring anyone to get up and adjust a shade manually. And critically, it's doing this through sensors and pre-set schedules — keeping the building operating at a uniform, consistent standard regardless of who's in the room or what time of day it is.
The two systems manage responsibility for the light environment across the course of the day. Shading owns the daytime. Lighting takes over at night. When both are specified thoughtfully and early with architects, interior designers, and integrators all in the room together, the result is a space that works the way it was designed to work, for the people living and working inside it.
What neither system can afford to be is an afterthought.
2. The Impact of Automated Shading Is Being Underestimated
Consider this: research consistently shows that people spend approximately 90% of their daytime hours indoors in office buildings, schools, hospitals, and retail environments, and the quality of light within those spaces has a measurable effect on productivity, comfort, and health. And yet, across North America, roughly 70 to 75% of shading installations are still manual systems.
Manual shades are common for a straightforward reason: upfront cost. But that comparison rarely accounts for the full picture.
Modern commercial buildings are designed with expansive glazing. Floor-to-ceiling windows are a selling feature, an architectural statement, and a thermal challenge all at once. Even high-performance glass with tinting or low-emissivity coatings leaves meaningful heat gain and glare for occupants to deal with. Without automated shading, the typical solution is manual adjustment which means shades left in the wrong position or occupants who've given up and just closed everything. The result is a building that never quite performs and looks the way it was intended.
Automated shading, when tied to sensors and occupancy schedules, solves this at scale. Shades respond to sun position, they adjust for glare thresholds, and they return to a uniform position at the end of the day — or after any manual override — to maintain the building's intended look and performance standard. For a multi-story commercial tower, this is not a convenience feature; it is a building management tool. This enables the building to reset its architectural aesthetic by automatically aligning window coverings to a uniform position.
There's also a compelling energy efficiency argument. By reducing thermal heat gain during peak sun hours, automated shading takes a real quantifiable load off HVAC systems — a benefit that stacks up meaningfully across the lifecycle of a building. This is increasingly relevant as energy efficiency standards tighten, and sustainability becomes a core requirement in commercial specifications, not an optional upgrade.
The market is recognizing this. Within the commercial sector, 60 to 65% of newly constructed buildings now feature a higher percentage of automated shading systems to meet energy codes like ASHRAE and California Title 24, while still having manual shades in most spaces. That number reflects what experienced architects and building owners already know: the ROI is real, and the cost conversation looks different when you're thinking about operational efficiency over years, not just the first cost on a budget line. Modern construction is increasingly focused on achieving Class A standards, fueling a surge in demand for integrated technology and building automation.
3. Integrators Are Driving Technology Selection
For a long time, the motorized shading conversation in commercial and high-end residential projects was led by roller shade dealers. They had established relationships with architects and designers who had preferred manufacturers, who were comfortable with the technology that they knew.
That's changing, and integrators are leading the charge.
When a control system goes down in a luxury commercial space or a high-end residential project, who gets the call? The integrator. They're the ones who own the relationship with the technology, who understand how the pieces connect, and who bear responsibility for the system performing the way the client expects. It's a natural extension of that role to include motorized shading in the scope, and increasingly, that's exactly what's happening.
We're seeing integrators take the lead on technology selection, bringing motorized shading into their project packages alongside AV, lighting control, and building automation. We're also seeing roller shade dealers adapt in response by hiring in-house integration expertise, partnering with integration firms, and building out their technical capabilities. The market is consolidating around a model where one trusted partner delivers a complete, functional solution rather than multiple trades working in silos.
This shift is accelerating for several reasons. Smart building adoption is increasing demand for connected systems, child safety regulations around corded window coverings are pushing the market toward motorized alternatives, and the cost gap between manual and motorized systems is narrowing, particularly as regulatory changes require that manual corded systems include safety features that add cost, bringing the price comparison much closer than it's historically been.
The projected growth rate between 2026 and 2033 for motorized shading in North America is approximately 13.4%, with a projected market size of US $5.8 billion1. For integrators and architects who are already having conversations with clients, that trajectory represents a significant and growing opportunity.
The Conversation Starts Earlier Than You Think
If there's a single operational takeaway from all of this, it's timing. The integrators and architects I've seen doing this well all share one habit: they bring shading into the conversation early. Early enough to coordinate rough-in wiring, early enough for the architect to design the structural pockets and coves where shades retract, and early enough for the interior designer to select fabrics that work with the building's solar orientation, aesthetics, and occupant needs.
When that coordination happens, everything else follows more cleanly because the right technology gets specified, the right infrastructure gets built, and then when the building opens, the shading system works the way it was designed to work — quietly, reliably, without anyone having to think about it.
That's what automated shading is supposed to do. It's not a feature you notice. It's the reason the room is comfortable, the glare is gone, and the building looks exactly the same from the outside whether it's 9 a.m. or 5 p.m.
It’s the technology inside that matters - and the projects that get that right, from the specification stage through installation, are the ones that clients remember and refer.
Karthick Kanagalingam is the Architectural Specification Manager at Somfy, where he works with architects, designers, engineers, and AV integrators on motorized shading solutions for commercial and high-end residential projects. For questions about specifying Somfy technology on your next project, reach out to your Somfy representative.
To hear more from Karthick about incorporating motorized shading in your next commercial project, listen to his Connected Design podcast episode.1
[1] https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/automated-blinds-and-shades-market.asp
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By Karthick Kanagalingam, Architectural Specification Manager, Somfy