The use of outdoor bamboo shades is great to take the heat off your windows and help cool down your house, and also perfect and to create a special style. Outdoor bamboo shades are relatively inexpensive and easy to fix into place, they are light, and bright and breezy whilst providing effective protection against direct rays from the sun coming into your windows, or onto your verandah, or into a patio area.
Using bamboo shades keeps you feeling close to nature and does not shut you off from contact with your garden, natural bamboo shades are not as dark as some other shades can be, and also allow air to flow through, which in summer can be very cooling.

Quality outdoor bamboo shades can be purchased from practically any home retail store, and there are bamboo garden accessories that will co-ordinate well with your outdoor bamboo shades, there are bamboo screens, bamboo pole fencing, bamboo recliners, bamboo lamp holders, gazebos and more.

Bamboo shades which suit exterior use can be slatted, which may a small amount of sunlight to filter through when closed and slats stack neatly when the blind is drawn up, to allow full access to external views or bamboo shades can be made of woven bamboo and a selection of other materials which provide a totally opaque screen and therefore total privacy. Some outdoor bamboo shades are made in what is known as “white bamboo’ – not really white , in fact more of a cream, this bamboo has had its external protective coating removed, so that there is only the pale inner bamboo section left to be made up into outdoor or indoor “white” bamboo shades.  You may like the texture and look of the white bamboo but it can just as easily be stained or varnished in a variety of timber colors such as mahogany, walnut, teak or golden oak or simply painted to match or coordinate with any decorator colors and styles.

Outdoor bamboo shades can be custom made and come in larger standard sizes such as 2400mm x 3000millimetres. Outdoor bamboo shades will add a touch of the orient to the street appeal of your home, providing a neat, colorful, textured appearance in external domestic awnings, and add interest to your back yard entertaining areas.

There are also hand-woven bamboo window shades – made of bamboo and wood with or without a backing cloth. Window shades can be painted in many designer colors – with matching metal head and foot rails, and color matched cording – some bamboo window shades come with matching pelmets and valances. To make a room complete, there is also bamboo solid flooring and many furnishings, accessories and craftwork made from bamboo.  For both China and from Vietnam you can get traditional style beaded bamboo curtains as a window shade.

There is a great variety of bamboo window shades – with bamboo interwoven with such materials as reeds, rattans and grasses in order to provide a unique and pleasing texture to your window shade. Smith and Noble offer basic bamboo woven shades and woven shades in the waterfall design. Smith and Noble also offer a cornice and two types of valance, which echo the current trend towards bamboo shades and also provide their new Panel track. Over 60 different natural material products are offered, including bamboo, all environmentally sound, and pleasing in appearance, which can be used alone or interwoven with bamboo to create entirely unique designs. Additional materials that can be interwoven with bamboo include reeds and exotic grasses.

Waterfall shades are designed to be put up without need of any cornice or valence – bamboo slats will stack neatly towards the top of the window in the waterfall models, or the blind is in roller form -  creating a very simplistic yet elegant Bamboo Window Shade.

Also available are insulated bamboo window shades – these can be made of bamboo and are often combined with the matchstick design to provide maximum privacy and protection from cold weather by having thermal coating attached. The thermal coating is also just as effective to prevent summertime rays from the sun coming in the window. Smith and Noble make custom sized blinds, which can start at 13” wide and go up to 95” wide, and 12” to 120” high.

Complete with a natural woven bamboo cornice which will add a touch of class to any bamboo roman shades comes the Industrial Bellona Bamboo Roman Shade. This beautifully colored mahogany shade is 72” x 72” and is as at home in a formal, elegant setting as it is for casual living.  Products from Bali also feature with shades in the Roman style, made of bamboo, and a variety of other materials such as palm rattans, grasses and jute, and also reeds.

Versailles fruitwood Bamboo Roman Shade 48” x 64” is a classic Roman Shade which has the bamboo slats stack neatly when the shade is raised – and comes with a 7” valance – complete with universal brackets and a color matched Easy Lift metal head rail. Pull cords are separate and child proof with an automatic locking device.

In woven wood bamboo roman shades there are top names such as Graber, Bali, Comfortex, and Hunter Douglas – it will be worthwhile to inspect all of the product ranges if you are looking for a Bamboo Roman Shade to see what types and variations in color , size and fittings are to be had however, it must be remembered that if you are looking at buying Bamboo Roman Blinds because they are relatively cheap, you can always consider buying budget versions such as Premium Bamboo Blinds – in Standard Roman style – premium is cheaper than the more well known brand name options and provides a totally satisfactory product at a reduced price. JC Penny can be accessed online to find many types of bamboo roman shades – providing interesting textures and painted in decorator colors – end of range specials are another cheap way to put simple but elegant bamboo roman shades into your interior home design.

From Bali also come traditional outside garden lampshades, some made in bamboo, trimmed and thatched with alang-alang grass, put some low power electric or solar powered lights in these beautifully thatched outdoor bamboo lampshades and you will light up your garden a treat!

Apart from Indonesia, India also exports bamboo lamp shades, and as might be expected, a national flavor emerges with bamboo lamp shades from India, being embellished with fine embroidery and set about with mirrors. Although offered in a vast range of styles and colors, any order for bamboo lampshades from India can be fully customized to your requirements.

Bamboo itself is a grass, but stems grow and thicken, particularly in the larger species to become a wood product, and bamboo is strong enough not only for use in domestic accessories, it can also be used for commercial bridgework. Choosing bamboo for a lamp stand or as the structure for a lampshade gives you a reliable and hardwearing product, there is nothing “flimsy” about bamboo.

Bamboo can also appear as a fabric to be used in a lamp structure made of bamboo or other materials. Bamboo can be made into fabric form by processes which are natural, such as are used for processing flax – or undergo chemical treatments. If you are looking for lamp shade fabric made from bamboo because you see it as being an artistic and natural product, you are advised to make sure that your bamboo fabric has been made by natural process and not by chemical spinning, bamboo rayon processed by chemical means is not to be regarded as the natural bamboo fabric product.

Bamboo grows in many places in the world, and using bamboo as a lamp shade holder, or as bamboo lamp shades themselves, whether providing form or fabric or both, is nothing new. Bamboo lamp shades can provide your home with an exotic luxury feel – in traditional or contemporary style.