Window treatments in Dadeville and on Lake Martin, AL

Lake Martin houses face the water: big windows, long porches and open rooms, often for families who come up from Birmingham, Montgomery, Auburn or Atlanta for the summer. On the east shore around Dadeville, in places like StillWaters and Blue Creek, much of that glass looks west across the lake, which means the strongest sun of the day arrives late in the afternoon, straight off the water.

That is why the usual answer here is a solar shade: it cuts the glare and the heat and keeps the view. In a house that is empty for days at a time, motorizing it lets the shades come down on a schedule and keep the place cool while nobody is there. Materials matter more than usual too, because lake air is damp, and faux wood or composite holds up where real wood can warp.

The porches are the other half of the job. A porch facing the water is where the summer is actually spent, and a motorized patio screen keeps out the bugs and the low evening sun, then rolls away when you want the open air back. Dadeville itself has an older side as well: a historic district running from the 1840s to the mid-1900s, where the windows are more a shutter conversation than a motorized one.