Hear from Our Customers
Hightsville sits in one of the sunniest, most humid stretches of coastal North Carolina. That summer sun coming through your south- or west-facing windows isn’t just uncomfortable — it’s slowly fading your hardwood floors, discoloring your furniture, and driving up your cooling costs every single month. Motorized blinds on a set schedule close during peak UV hours and open when the heat backs off. You don’t have to think about it. It just happens.
For homeowners in Preservation Point’s newer luxury townhomes, that means protecting premium interior finishes from day one. For those in Hightsville’s older, tree-lined neighborhoods, it means finally doing something about the windows that get ignored because they’re too high, too awkward, or just too much trouble. Either way, you get a home that’s more comfortable, more efficient, and better protected — without changing how you live.
And if you have kids, grandkids, or pets in the home, there’s a regulatory reason to pay attention right now. As of June 2024, the WCMA/ANSI safety standard effectively banned traditional corded blinds with accessible loops from the US market. Motorized and cordless treatments aren’t just more convenient — they’re the current standard for child and pet safety.
We own and operate Coastal Window Fashions NC out of Hampstead and serve the full coastal NC market — including New Hanover County and the Hightsville area. We’ve completed over 4,000 window treatment installations across the region, which means we’ve worked in homes just like yours: older residences with non-standard windows in Hightsville’s established neighborhoods, new construction with large open layouts in Preservation Point, and everything in between.
When you call, you reach Sal. When he comes out, he measures, shows you samples in your actual space, and gives you a quote the same day. There’s no franchise call center, no rotating technicians, and no one passing your job off to someone else. One person handles it start to finish — and that person has a 910 number and a track record you can look up.
Every custom purchase includes free installation. The consultation is free too. There’s genuinely nothing to lose by making the call.
It starts with a free in-home consultation. Sal comes to your Hightsville home — whether you’re in a new build near Preservation Point or an established home off Castle Hayne Road — brings a full selection of samples, and walks through your options in your actual space. You see how the treatments look in your light, next to your furniture, on your windows. Not in a showroom. Not on a screen.
From there, Sal takes same-day measurements and puts together a quote on the spot. No waiting a week for someone to email you a number. You know what you’re working with before he leaves. Once you decide to move forward, your custom treatments are ordered through Graber — a brand backed by a limited lifetime warranty — and installation is scheduled at your convenience.
Installation itself is clean and straightforward. For battery-powered or plug-in motorized systems, no electrical permit is needed in New Hanover County. If you’re interested in a hardwired system — which some Preservation Point homeowners prefer for a cleaner look — Sal will walk you through what that involves so there are no surprises. When the job is done, Sal walks you through how everything works: the remote, the app, and any smart home integrations you’ve set up.
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Motorized blinds aren’t one-size-fits-all, and the right choice depends on your windows, your home, and how you actually live. We carry the full range: battery-powered motors for rooms where running a cord to an outlet isn’t practical, plug-in systems for straightforward installs, and hardwired options for homeowners who want a completely seamless finish. All of them can be controlled by remote, and most are compatible with app control and smart home platforms like Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit.
For Hightsville’s newer luxury homes — especially those with large windows and high ceilings — motorized roller shades or Roman shades tend to be the most popular choice. They handle the scale of the window, manage glare on river-view exposures, and integrate cleanly with modern interiors. For the older homes in the community, motorized treatments solve a very practical problem: windows that are hard to reach, windows that stick, or window placements that make manual operation genuinely inconvenient.
Pricing for motorized blinds typically runs between $150 and $1,200 per window depending on size, treatment type, and the power and integration options you choose. Sal will give you a specific number at the consultation — not a range, not a ballpark, an actual quote. And one verified customer documented that Sal came in at $300 for a skylight shade installation while an out-of-town competitor quoted over $900 for the same job. Local, owner-operated pricing is a real difference.
This is a fair question for any home in the Cape Fear region. New Hanover County summers are long, hot, and genuinely humid — and that moisture affects hardware over time, even in homes that aren’t directly on the water. The good news is that quality motorized systems are built with sealed, corrosion-resistant motors that handle coastal humidity far better than traditional cord-and-pulley hardware with exposed metal components.
The Graber products we install are designed for durability in exactly these conditions. Battery-powered and plug-in systems have no exposed wiring to degrade, and the motors themselves are engineered to last. If you’re in an older Hightsville home that’s already seen decades of coastal NC summers, upgrading to a motorized system is actually a more durable long-term choice than continuing to rely on aging corded hardware that was never built for this climate.
The honest range is $150 to $1,200 per window, and where you fall in that range depends on a few straightforward things: the size of the window, the type of treatment you choose (roller shade, Roman shade, cellular shade, etc.), and whether you go with battery-powered, plug-in, or hardwired motors. Smart home integration adds a modest cost on top of the motor itself, but it’s not the dramatic upcharge some people expect.
What you won’t pay with us is an installation fee — that’s included with every custom purchase. The consultation is also free. So the quote Sal gives you at your Hightsville home is the real number, not a starting point for add-ons. For context, one customer documented Sal quoting $300 for a skylight shade while an out-of-town competitor quoted over $900 for the same job. Getting a local quote costs you nothing and gives you a real comparison point.
Most of the motorized systems we install are compatible with all three major smart home platforms — Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit. That means if you already have a smart home setup in your Preservation Point home or anywhere else in Hightsville, your blinds can integrate directly into the system you’re already using. You can control them by voice, build them into automations, or trigger whole-home scenes that adjust your lights, thermostat, and blinds simultaneously.
For homeowners who don’t have a smart home setup and don’t want one, that’s completely fine too. Every motorized system comes with a handheld remote that works independently — no WiFi required, no app needed. The smart integration is an option, not a requirement. Sal will walk you through what’s compatible with your specific setup during the consultation so you’re not guessing after the fact.
For the most common motorized blind setups — battery-powered or plug-in systems — no permit is required in New Hanover County. These are self-contained systems that don’t involve any new electrical wiring, so they fall outside the scope of what triggers a permit requirement. We can install them in your Hightsville home without any additional steps or delays.
If you want a hardwired motorized system — which some homeowners prefer because it eliminates batteries entirely and keeps things completely clean aesthetically — that’s a different situation. Hardwired systems that require new electrical wiring do need an electrical permit in New Hanover County, and the wiring portion needs to be handled by a licensed electrician. Sal will be upfront about this during the consultation if hardwired is the direction you’re leaning, so you understand exactly what’s involved before you commit to anything.
Yes, and it’s not a marginal difference. Studies on automated window treatments show 10 to 30 percent reductions in energy costs when blinds are programmed to close during peak heat hours — typically 10 AM to 4 PM — and open during cooler parts of the day. In the Wilmington area, where summer heat runs from May through October and average August highs sit around 88 degrees, that’s a long season of solar heat gain coming through your windows every day.
For Hightsville homeowners who commute to Wilmington and leave their homes sitting in the sun all morning, a scheduled motorized system is doing real work while you’re gone. Your air conditioning isn’t fighting as hard, your home is cooler when you get back, and your monthly utility bill reflects it. The energy savings alone won’t pay for the blinds overnight, but over a few years in a coastal NC climate, they’re a genuine financial argument — not just a selling point.
There are a few window treatment companies that list Hightsville as a service area — some are national franchises, some are local independents. The practical difference with us is that Sal is the person who answers the phone, comes to your home, takes the measurements, and does the installation. There’s no franchise layer, no rotating technicians, and no call center between you and the person responsible for the work.
That matters more than it sounds. When you have a question after installation, or something needs attention down the road, you call the same person who installed it — someone with a 910 number, a local reputation, and over 4,000 completed installations across coastal NC to stand behind. The free consultation and free installation remove the risk from the first step entirely. You’re not committing to anything by having Sal come out — you’re just getting a real quote from someone who knows New Hanover County homes and prices them accordingly.
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