These days, people are looking to make more space in their homes. Building out and up is often the direction people must take, when they cannot move from their home for whatever reason. Hiring an architect and a contractor are big steps for most homeowners, so often corners will be cut. However, if the reason that a consumer is looking to expand is to create more spaces, room dividing should be considered.

Traditional room dividers are folding doors, or sliding partitions. These have the benefits of actually creating spaces which are sound tight or private. The drawbacks with these include the space that their installation requires, the cost of installation, and the reality that many locations are simply not appropriate for these large semi-permanent fixtures. When a client is looking for a partition to make a twelve foot room into a space of eight feet with a four foot storage space, these doors might cause too much of a permanence. On the other hand, roller shades may make a perfect room divider. The fact that roller shades retract fully to the ceiling, and may hang down only a few inches is a major benefit worth exploring.

The ability to motorize roller shades makes them highly functional as room dividers. In addition to these benefits, roller shades can be made from a huge range of color coordinated styles, to ensure that they match the decor. The low profile of roller shades on the ceiling allows for several great benefits for the consumers.

Standard partitions can block the traffic in a room. This is caused by the stack that they make on the side of a room, as much as three feet wide. Roller shades, on the other hand, can retract fully to the ceiling, even allowing them to be hidden in a soffit.

Considering that most of these rooms cannot spare the three to four feet on the side, most rooms do have an extra four or five inches at the ceiling to hang a roller shade. Thus, roller shades are using the cubic space in a new and efficient fashion. When installing sliding partitions, these are almost always going to be manually controlled. On the other hand, roller shades may have the ability to be motorized.

These motors allow the quick, easy and quiet raising or lowering of the roller shades, at the press of a button. Aside from looking sleek, these motorized roller shades have the unique benefits of not requiring hanging chains from the side. This removes another obstruction and traffic hindrance. In addition, motorized roller shades can be set on a timer, or controlled remotely, which has value for some meeting planners. Folding doors from plastic are only available in a short range of colors. Those from wood are expensive and need to be painted to match the decor, if you can even find them.

Sliding partitions are also only available in a range of colors. Roller shades, on the other hand, are now available in more than 1000 colors and styles. This has the decor benefit of being able to match the room decor, as well as matching the roller shades in the windows. More than that, roller shades as room dividers can be used to give slight moderation of the light and sound, so they are not always a one way solution. There are some issues to remember with roller shades as room dividers, however. The first is that they do not provide much privacy for noise.

The lightness of the fabrics allows most sounds to pass through the fabric. The next issue to consider is the durability of the shades. These roller shades will be exposed to more wear than a typical window treatment, and this will cause a more rapid rate of deterioration. In addition, they are not as resistant to wear as wood or other solid partitions. However, if your goal is to make a temporary sleeping space or to hide a storage space, then roller shades can meet your needs. Expensive and clunky partitions may not disappear from the market completely, but today's roller shades are quite capable of meeting a need in the room dividing market.

Choosing roller shades as room dividers may offer several benefits, including not blocking traffic, so consider them for your space making needs.

Judith Persit reports on interior design concentrating in home design. She writes about roller shades. Learn more about shopping for shades by reading more of her reports.