Daylight control for public spaces

Daylight is the most powerful force shaping how a room feels, and the hardest to get right. It changes by the hour, by season and by façade. Without a plan, the same space can shift from bright and inviting in the morning to glaring and uncomfortable by midday.

The good news is that managing daylight well is entirely achievable. It starts with understanding the key factors and choosing solutions designed for the task.

At Almedahls, we have spent decades developing textiles specifically for demanding public environments. Our role is to give you a clear, structured way to approach daylight, so every product decision is informed, and every room performs the way it should.

Sunlight carries energy. Too much of it raises room temperature, creates glare on screens and makes people uncomfortable. Too little and a space feels heavy and unwelcoming.

The goal is not to block the sun, it is to let the right amount in, at the right time, in the right way.

This is why static solutions rarely work on their own. A fixed curtain or blind that works in winter overheats a south-facing room in summer. A textile chosen for aesthetics alone may fail on thermal performance.

Getting it right requires understanding how your glazing, orientation and space use interact, and choosing materials that address all three.

Every room has its own daylight challenge. A south-facing office overheats by noon. A classroom with no glare control kills concentration. A healthcare corridor needs calm, even light all day.

We look at the full picture: glare on screens, thermal load, blackout needs, acoustic comfort, colour and texture, cleanability and sustainability. Not as a checklist – but as connected forces that shape how a space actually feels to be in.

The sun does not care about your floor plan. On a clear afternoon, unprotected glazing raises room temperature, reduces screen visibility and makes spaces difficult to use.

Solar protection fabric is the first line of defence, placed at the window, working with your glazing to manage heat and glare while preserving view and daylight quality. The right specification depends on façade orientation, glazing solar factor and how the space is used. We make that matching process straightforward, with full performance data for every product so you can specify with confidence.

Our most commonly used solar protection fabrics are assessed by Byggvarubedömningen, the Swedish building product assessment system widely used in public procurement. Virtually all fabrics in our range carry Oeko-Tex certification, and our entire production chain is STeP certified, covering the full value chain from raw material to finished product.

Flame retardant fabrics are formally tested against recognised benchmark standards. For environments where hygiene is a specification requirement, our fabrics are tested for cleanability against standards we have developed in alignment with the Swedish health authorities – verified in our own laboratory and testing facility.

• g-value — how much solar energy passes through the glass alone
• U-value — how well the glass insulates (lower means better)
• gtot — the combined solar performance of glass and textile working together

This last number is the one that matters most in practice. It tells you whether your textile and glazing are genuinely working in the same direction — or against each other. Approximately half of the fabrics in our solar protection range achieve a gtot C classification, with values between 0.2 and 0.4 — meaning that the combined effect of glazing and fabric blocks the majority of incoming solar energy. 

We help you calculate gtot for your specific window type, orientation and room, and can model the impact on thermal comfort and energy performance.

Some buildings need daylight control to work the same way in every room, on every floor, every single day. But daylight is never the same from one hour to the next, and neither are the comfort needs of the people inside.

That is exactly why our Dynamic Solar Protection systems are dynamic. They are designed to respond to shifting light and temperature conditions throughout the day, maintaining well-being consistently rather than just performing well in a single set of conditions. Consistent performance, straightforward specification, nothing left to chance. The right choice when scale, adaptability and reliability are non-negotiable.

Not every space needs a blind. Sometimes what a room needs is softer light; contrast reduced, glare taken down, atmosphere dialled in.

Hanging Textiles achieve this in a way no hard system can. They filter and diffuse daylight rather than blocking it, bringing rhythm and calm to workplaces, learning environments and public interiors.

What many specifiers do not initially expect is that Hanging Textiles can deliver a measurable daylight control impact – not just an aesthetic one. That is why we test and document our Hanging Textiles using the same performance methodology we apply to solar protection fabrics: openness factor, solar transmittance, light transmittance. All verified in our own laboratory and testing facility.

Where hygiene is a requirement, Hanging Textiles are tested against the same cleanability standards as our solar protection range. You get the same quality of specification data for your interior textiles as for your window systems. Because in a well-designed space, the two work together.