How to get shade under a pergola

The cheap options go over or around the frame you already have. The dearer ones replace the roof, so you’re really buying a different pergola. Costs for cloth and curtains are retailer listings read on 20 October 2026, and kit costs are from our Pergola Price Index.

Shade you add later is a patch on a frame built for something else. If shade is the reason you’re buying, pick the roof first and let the frame follow.

A sliding fabric canopy is the cheapest roof you can open. Pull it across on a hot afternoon and slide it back in the evening. Its limit is rain: none of these kits has a gutter, so water runs off the edge. We cover the kits, and what to check on the warranty and the replacement canopy, on retractable pergolas.

A louvered roof gives shade and closes against rain, which is why it costs more. The slats tilt, so you choose how much sun gets through, and when they’re shut the roof sheds water. Louvered pergolas shows every kit at your size, and manual or motorized shows what a motor really adds.

A fixed roof shades all day and never moves. Most are steel or polycarbonate, and most are sold as hardtop gazebos rather than pergolas. Pergolas with a roof explains both kinds. A roofed structure can also be treated differently from an open pergola when a city decides whether you need a permit, so check yours before you buy.

A few kits ship with curtains, netting, screens or a sail, so you’re not hunting for a size that fits afterwards. These four are the clearest examples:

Included curtains are the weakest part of the package. Domi covers the roof and frame for five years but the curtains and netting for one, so plan on replacing the fabric first.

For an open pergola this is the cheapest overhead shade. The cloth listed for pergolas at Home Depot and Lowe’s is mostly labeled 90 percent. That label is a shade factor, not a measure of ultraviolet light. One cloth maker’s data sheet warns that the shade factor “is not a specific measurement of Ultra Violet Radiation,” and it gives about 69 percent for green cloth against about 94 percent for black. Color changes the shade you get, so read the label for the color you’re buying.

You need a ladder, a drill or staple gun, and someone to hold the far end. A cloth seller’s install guide says to leave 8 to 12 inches of overhang on every side, fix the edge nearest the house first, then fasten every 12 to 18 inches across the beams, closer if your site is windy. It recommends stainless steel hardware.

A sail is the same idea with a different fixing. Instead of lying flat on the beams, it is pulled to the corners with straps. Some kits include one, like the Brendan above.

Cloth sold as shade lets some rain through, so it protects your skin and not your furniture. One seller’s knit shade cloth is described as giving only light rain protection because it isn’t waterproof. If you want rain cover too, go to the waterproof kind, and read the next section before you do.

Curtains do something a roof can’t. When the sun drops, it comes in sideways under the beams, and only a vertical panel stops it. They also give you privacy from the neighbors.

They don’t shade the top of the pergola, so people who want both put cloth or a canopy overhead and curtains around the sides.

A few choices decide whether they last. Pick fabric made for outdoors: a decor publisher’s curtain guide says polyester blends are cheap but fade and need replacing about every two years, cotton mildews, and indoor curtains aren’t suitable at all.

Check the length against your pergola. Many ready-made panels are 84 inches long, and Costco lists the Mirador louvered pergola at about 8 ft 3 in tall, so an 84-inch panel hangs about 15 inches short of the floor. Measure from the rail to the ground before you order, or choose a custom size.

A rod with brackets is the easiest way to hang them, and the same guide advises a center bracket on wide spans so the rod doesn’t bow. Tension rods and wire suit light curtains and narrow openings only.

If you want screens that retract rather than curtains, look at kits that include them. Erommy’s pull-down screens kit has four that retract into the housing, and louvered pergolas lists the rest of the louvered kits.

Fabric on a pergola catches the wind like a sail. It pulls on every fixing, and the loose edge of a curtain or cloth flaps until something gives. Makers know it. Domi’s own pergola page tells owners to tie the curtains up in storms. A sail maker says to take a sail down when a storm is predicted, not once it arrives, and to check the hardware afterwards.

So plan to take shade down or tie it back when a storm is forecast, and fix it well enough to survive a gusty day you didn’t plan for. Fasten more often rather than less, and use hardware that won’t rust out of a beam.

Rain is the other trap. Waterproof fabric stretched flat sags into a bowl, the water pools in the middle, and every pound of it pulls on the fixings. A shade-sail specialist quoted in a trade magazine advises against waterproof sails unless the design leaves enough slope for the water to run off. If you want a waterproof cover on a flat pergola, fix it at a slope, with one end lower than the other, or accept that it will pool.

A cloth seller adds a related point about wide panels: its Sunbrella panels 36 inches wide or more need drainage grommets about 18 to 24 inches apart so the water has somewhere to go.

Owner reviews of curtains, shade covers and replacement canopies complain about the same three things, and none of them is the fabric’s shade.

The first is size. Buyers report panels and canopies that came up shorter than the listing, in some cases by well over a foot, so measure the finished piece rather than the fabric size on the product page. The second is what’s missing from the box: a few buyers received curtains with no ties or hooks to hang them, and the panels blew around loose. The third is how long the fabric lasts. Reviewers describe sheer polyester curtains fading within six months, clear vinyl tearing before a year, and canopies lasting from a year or so to about three.

Water and wind come up too. Owners of waterproof covers describe rain collecting between the slats or pooling on the fabric, and one owner of a canopy kit reports the whole top collapsing in a rain-and-wind storm. What they praise is heavy, thick fabric, grommets all the way round, and clear panels that keep the view while blocking wind and rain.