The Series 3 Décor hardware collection brings a seamless, elegant look to any project
July 31, 2024 - For decades, Crestron has worked with designers and dealers who’ve shared the same overarching request from their clients:
“How do we hide this?’
The desire to make technological solutions as unobtrusive as possible — if not completely invisible — is a common ask, especially in residential installations. No one really wants to see an equipment rack, much less the back of one. Visible cables are a big no-no. Some clients want TV displays that disappear into ceilings, floors, or furniture.
“Hiding the inner workings of a device elevates the design experience,” says Crestron’s Leah Martinez, who oversees control and environmental products for the company. Martinez — who has many years of experience in the shading industry — realized that Crestron’s shading solutions weren’t quite up to par.
“With our older shades, you could see the inner workings of the shade, you can see the idler pin, you can see the bracket,” she points out. Multiply that by a bank of windows, and suddenly a room takes on a look that’s more utilitarian and less “upscale home or business.” “Your eye is drawn to those parts that seem out of place in an installation,” notes Martinez. “When you can see the mechanics or the motor driving the shade, that’s what you’ll key on.” Although similar to many of Crestron’s competitors, it was a look that had simply become outdated.
“We knew we had to bring an aesthetic update to our hardware,” she says.
All-New Hardware for the Series 3 Décor Shading Series
The Crestron team understood that just adding a cover that overlapped more of the device’s bracket wouldn’t quite do the trick. “We had to be very intentional in our design,” says Martinez. The result was an end cap with a very tight tolerance that transitions the eye of the viewer from the shading fabric to the end cap.
“We also decided on black brackets and a black motor head, no matter the color of the end cap,” says Martinez. Since only a fraction of those parts are potentially visible — and they’re tucked into a space that sees hardly any light — they have the effect of disappearing in the background from the user’s view. “It creates a seamless look,” says Martinez.
The other upgrade to the hardware is less about aesthetics: “These are incredibly sturdy parts,” says Martinez. There’s a heft to the new hardware, a feel that verifies the product’s durability, reliability, and safety. “For any client who’s spending a portion of their residential technology budget on motorized shades, we felt the build quality had to be best-in-class,” says Martinez.
Features of the new Series 3 Décor hardware collection include:
The Perfect Color
It’s one thing to design a piece of sturdy, elegant hardware for a line of shades. It’s quite another challenge to determine what colors to offer.
Martinez outlines the issue: “We offer 435 fabrics in our current roller shade collection — 435 options to choose from. And when we pick the color palette, our goal is that our hardware can coordinate with the fabric collection.” It’s simply not feasible to offer hardware that’s a precise match to every shade of fabric, so the team needed to be very judicious.
The team settled on six basic options to choose from, and then the process of checking each selection against that broad range of fabrics began. “To give you an example, we probably offer something along the lines of 50 different whites, and they range from cool whites that are bright and vibrant and crisp to very creamy whites that are warm and inviting,” says Martinez. “If you only get one complimentary shade of white when it comes to the hardware, the goal is that white should be able to coordinate with the spectrum of fabric colors.”
The process called for more color options than had been initially planned, including a new gray tone. “We have so many gray fabrics that we made the determination that we needed to add a darker gray so that it helps with the color coordination for the customer,” says Martinez.
The evolution of the products continues. “We’re looking at adding more finishes to the hardware, including metallic looks,” says Martinez. “And we’re constantly addressing how our shading options can mirror or complement the finishes of our keypads and all the other solutions we’re creating.”
While a shading solution may seem like a simple creation to an untrained eye, Martinez is fascinated by the myriad ways a single aspect of a project can improve the overall experience. “My job comes down to understanding the consumer's needs and how to be empathetic. And shading can transform your home in so many different ways — it’s part of your lighting scheme, it impacts climate control, and it can really affect the ‘mood’ of a room.”
“It has much more of an impact than people realize — but when they see it, that ‘oh, wow’ moment is something special.”
