Weffort Motorized Roller Shades for Smart Homes

Over the past few years, I’ve added more and more smart devices into my home, from sensors and lights to automation hubs and displays. One of the latest upgrades has been in the living room, where we swapped out regular blackout curtains for Weffort’s Motorized Roller Shades. In this review, I’ll walk you through the ordering process, customization options, setup experience, and what it’s been like using them. 

Weffort offers a lot of options to choose from, like, drapery, outdoor shades, and a wide variety of indoor styles. You can choose from classic roller shades, light-filtering sheers, zebra shades, or go for the elegant look of roman and cellular designs. For those who want flexibility, they also offer dual shades that combine different blackout levels to suit changing needs throughout the day. 

The ordering process is straightforward but offers a huge amount of flexibility. What really caught our attention was how fast everything was done, especially considering these are fully customised blinds. We placed the order and within just three days, they were already shipped. Two days after that, the box was at our doorstep. Five days total for made-to-measure shades is honestly impressive and not something we expected. 

For our setup, we went with the Bouvardia Blackout series in Light Grey, mounted outside the window frame. Each shade was custom sized to 145 cm wide by 230 cm high. For our particular case we decided to instal two shades per window, giving us a bit more flexibility in general.

We chose the cassette valance with matching fabric for a cleaner, integrated look, paired with the standard bottom rod. The blinds are powered by a battery motor, which is great for avoiding visible wiring, and we chose to have the motor with solar panels on the right-hand side for all blinds. However, after installing the panels, we did regret the placement and came up with a solution on how to move them to a more convenient place.  

Since the cable is relatively short, it’s important to think carefully about where the motor will be placed as it also houses the charging and power port. In our case, one set of blinds is installed over balcony doors, so we ordered an extension cable for one of the solar panels. With that in place, we were able to position the panel neatly at the far end, where it’s out of the way and protected from accidental damage.  

The solar panel’s effectiveness really comes down to how much direct sunlight your window receives. These windows get very little direct sun throughout the day, so there’s a gradual discharge. That said, the panel provides just enough trickle charge to stretch the battery life to about three or four months, which, all things considered, I’m perfectly happy with. 

To hide the panels, we set our blinds to stop at about 20 cm from the top. Even though I do like the clean look of fully retracted blinds, but with the solar option, I think this small adjustment improves the overall neatness. 

If you’re managing multiple blinds and shades throughout your home and wish to operate them either individually or collectively using a tangible device, you can choose to get 5 or 15-channel remote control. We love all things smart, so this remote control is going to be as a back up only. 

We use Zigbee, but Weffort supports a wide range of smart ecosystems. And while the pairing process was far from seamless (it took close to an hour and countless presses of the pairing button to get all four shades connected) once set up, they worked reliably and responded quickly to both remote and automation commands. 

In terms of performance, the noise levels are reasonable for a living room space. When testing just one blind, it comes up at around 49 dBA, while all four together register at around 53 dBA from a metre away. Lowering our 230 cm shades takes around 34 seconds, which feels like a good balance between speed and noise levels.  

There’s also a hidden trick to fine-tune how fast the blinds move. By popping off the battery cover on the remote and pressing the small “P” button underneath, you unlock a speed adjustment mode. From there, pressing the up or down arrows changes the speed setting. With the motor giving feedback through a series of quick jogs: one jog confirms the press, two jogs mean medium speed, and three jogs signal full speed ahead. We cranked ours up to the maximum, which brought the open-or-close time down to just 30 seconds. 

One limitation is that the blinds do not stop automatically if there is an obstacle in the way. This could potentially damage the fabric or motor if something blocks the path.  

At one point we did notice that one of the blinds developed a strange noise during operation, so we contacted Weffort’s customer support team for assistance, and they were quick to jump in and solve the issue. Luckily the fix was pretty simple - we just took the shade down, opened it up, and reassembled it. It involved removing three screws and took no more than ten minutes. After that, the noise disappeared completely. 

Let’s talk a bit more in detail about automation. In our example, we want the blind to come down whenever the lights are on to provide privacy and stay down during the night. If it’s before 6 PM, once the light is off, the blind opens up. After 6 PM, if the blind is down and the light is off, it will stay closed until the morning. For the morning routine we are utilising the sensors in the kitchen. To have them open up automagically but never waking us up too early, the automation is set for any time after 8am, if the blinds are down and there is movement in the kitchen, all the blinds will be triggered to open.  This routine has become seamless, and it’s one of those quality-of-life improvements you quickly get used to. 

It’s been also very useful on weekends when we decide to binge-watch TV shows during the day. With a single button press, our automation sets the lights, adjusts the AC, and now lowers the blinds to create our ideal viewing environment. 

Overall, these blackout roller shades delivered exactly what we were hoping for: a precise, custom fit; excellent privacy performance; and seamless integration with our smart home setup. While the pairing process could be smoother, and obstacle detection would be a welcome addition, the overall experience has been very positive. They look fantastic, work reliably, and make the living room feel more private and functional without any daily effort on our part.