[dentedvw]

I was watching a movie the other day (home sick with my daughter) and our living room has a large window that faces south. Also, we don't have a tv, we have a projector. To cover the window, we have been using some vertical blinds that were there when we moved in. They are tempermental, and shed blinds occasionally as well. Not to mention that they look terrible. Pink.
I was hoping to come up with an affordable solution for blacking out, or drastically reducing the amount of light that comes in this window. We don't use the blinds very often, but when we do, we want it to work well. My biggest peeve about them is that they are large, gaudy, and block precious daylight even when drawn open fully.
I envision something that is mounted vertically on one side, and would unroll across the window area horizontally. I don't need opaque, just blackout. I would definitely settle for something that is horizontally mounted and came down from the top, but the problem is that the area to cover is 140 inches wide.
Any ideas?
I am not adverse to DIY, but not able to come up with something from scratch.
Could even be motorized...

[kmcg]

I made a really simple top-mounted Roman shade that I installed inside the window frame. The window is 10-11 feet wide. When pulled up, the shade almost disappears - you just have to go for a relatively lightweight fabric and simple style so you don't get much bulk.

Kathy

[splatgirl]

You might try looking for something from a commercial window shade mfgr. Large windows are something they deal with regularly and I know I've seen lots of things, motorized or not, that sound like what you describe.
Googling "motorized shades" got me several...

[kirsty]

Hmm. I bit the bullet and ordered honeycomb shades off of blinds.com for my LR, but then, we use ours every day. They're hunter douglas ($$, but they were the only company I could find that would make them 80" wide) We got a good price off of blinds.com, they're really lightweight, and when they're up, they only protrude into the window about an inch at the top. I love them.

I love the way roman blinds look, but they were more expensive and we couldn't get them wide enough for our windows. 140" is a huge window! At 80" our choices were very limited. I agree with Kathy, whatever you use would need to be very lightweight or it would get really bulky/heavy.

Good luck!