I ordered this to hang in a south-facing doorway where I have a French door with a sidelight. It gets very hot there at certain parts of the day because the door's windows were never sealed properly. I put a curtain on the door, which works ok, but I still get a lot of heat and cold air, depending on the season, through the sidelight. This fits perfectly in the frame of the door and was easy to mount, taking me about 20 minutes. The coffee color blends in well since it's in the same color family as the paint in my mudroom. The blackout of this shade is good, except at the top where it's attached to the brackets. The gap is quite large, (I can stick my finger through it) so a lot of light comes through there as well as the heat/cold I'm using this to mitigate. It's still better than not having a shade there at all, but at the price point, it would have been nice if there'd been a valance to block the light at the top of the shade. Since I have a curtain on the door's window, I only get light coming through the top where the sidelight is. The shade also lets in more light on one side than the other due to how the fabric was cut or installed on the roller bar, so it has a larger gap on one side than the other (see pics). If you're using this shade and want full blackout, you'll likely need to use light blockers on the sides. For my purpose, the light blockers would be overkill, but I want to be clear that if you're using this in a bedroom or another location where you want total darkness, it does allow light to come through at the top and, in my case, because of how it was manufactured, more on one side than the other. If, however, you're planning to use an outside mount, you can hang it to mitigate the gap at the top and prevent light from coming through there. This is advertised as being suitable for indoor or outdoor use, but I don't think I'd use this where it would be exposed to the elements. I'm not sure I'd even be comfortable using this shade in an outdoor location that's well-protected because there's no discernable difference between this shade's fabric and other similar roller shades hanging in my house. Based on this allusion I expected the fabric of this to be more similar in construction to a solar shade, but it's not. Overall, this is a good-quality shade with some obvious caveats. How well the light blocking works for you will depend on how well it fits your window and whether you use an outside or inside mount. I think it would be better if they'd built it with an attached valance so that you have light blocking at the top regardless of your installation preference. It's hard to call this a true blackout shade when it has this glaring problem. This isn't a deal breaker for me based on what I'm using it for, but it may be for you. There does also seem to be a minor quality control issue in how the fabric is centered, but that might have just been my bad luck.
