Any socially distanced conversation that happens in dermatologist Amy Forman Taub’s north suburban backyard occurs under her extra-wide patio umbrella.
“It’s a godsend,” she says, explaining that she pivots the big parasol to fend off the sun no matter where it is in the sky.
The pursuit of shade is a preoccupation playing out in backyards across the country as two public health imperatives collide: the interest in holding more gatherings outdoors, and the long-standing guidance to minimize exposure to direct sunlight to avoid skin and eye damage.
As COVID-19-minimizing protocols force people outside, many Americans will be freshly cognizant of shade, Taub said. “Shade is a good thing,” she said. “Without shade in your backyard, it’s difficult to avoid damage.”
Cumulative skin damage is a threat to everyone, said Taub, founder and medical director of Advanced Dermatology in Lincolnshire and a physician member of the Skin Cancer Foundation. People with autoimmune diseases, those who are protecting surgical scars, and individuals dealing with side effects from drug regimes also deal with photosensitivity and must avoid UV rays, she said.
Northern Illinois contractors say shade has been a hot commodity for the past 12 months.
But layering shade into home outdoor spaces is more complicated than it might seem. The direction, intensity, seasonality and predictability of sunlight make shade a moving target. The obvious solution might be to construct hard-roof shelters such as gazebos and porches. But roofs that cast summer shade also prevent passive solar warming from the winter sun.
Consequently, shade-chasing homeowners like Taub usually end up combining permanent shade structures with movable protections, such as awnings, umbrellas and the newly popular sails, which are horizontal planes of canvas stretched high overhead. Contractors say the emerging solution is to develop highly designed spaces that combine hard surfaces to support big umbrellas, posts to anchor sails, permanent structures that guarantee at least some shade every day and natural shade from foliage.
What is shade, anyway?
Sunlight is readily measured; shade, not so much. It’s more nuanced than the simple lack of sun, which would be complete darkness.
The experience of being cooler in the shade is the result of several factors: less downward shortwave solar radiation due to a shade structure, lower humidity and, usually, a bit of wind speed, said George Ban-Weiss, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California.
Shade is created by a “lack of sunlight transfer,” he said, but that’s complicated by the three forms of sunlight — reflective, absorbed and transmitted. Direct sunlight is the most obvious to block, but sunlight also bounces off surfaces such as cement, and shatters into diffused rays, Ban-Weiss said. That’s why direct shade is not completely dark, he said.
Unlike the sun protection factor that offers a consistent reference for the level of protection offered by sunscreen lotions, there is no rating for shade, Ban-Weiss said. “We would benefit from the establishment of a third-party rating system that helps consumers clearly understand the amount of sun protection provided by different shading systems, both from UV protection and total heat protection,” he added.
Meanwhile, a study sponsored by home insurance company Hippo found that 54% of homeowners upgraded their backyard living spaces in the past year.
Some of that activity has involved converting open decks to porches and upgrading open porches to screened three-season rooms, said Michael Isherwood, owner of Westchester-based Sagent Builders.
“On smaller lots, people have to choose between open space and roofed space,” Isherwood said. Even a modest 10-by-12-foot screened porch creates enough permanently shaded space to justify rugs and high-end furniture, he said, especially when the furnishings are shielded from rain.
Enclosed porches with sliding screen doors offer the additional benefit of winter storage for lawn furniture that is otherwise left out in the cold, he said.
Indications are that shade features support home values, according to data from national brokerage Redfin and national listing platform Zillow.
While only 2.8% of Chicago listings in the last year have highlighted a “lanai,” which is a Hawaiian term for a free-standing small pavilion, those that do have this type of shade shelter sell for 0.4% closer to their list prices than listings overall, according to Redfin data.
Zillow data indicates that listings that mention pergolas — typically, free-standing horizontal lattices that afford light shade and that support vines — capture a 1% price premium and sell about 4.4 days faster than the average listing.
Semi-permanent shade solutions are less expensive and also less likely to contribute to home value precisely because they are not built. Sales of awnings are growing by 20% annually, said Tim Kellogg, chair of the Professional Awning Manufacturing Association, partly due to the relatively affordable $5,000 average cost and as well as the flexibility of unfurling awnings in summer and dismantling them in winter.
Overhead sails are growing in popularity due to style, ease of installation and their reasonable cost, said Allyson Case Anderson, who runs Integro Builders, based in Chicago. Usually 3- to 6-foot triangles of canvas, the sails are hitched to permanently installed posts that typically pass muster with condo boards, she said, and that don’t infringe on close neighbors in tight city neighborhoods. A typical installation costs about $6,000, she said.
Sculptural arrangements of layered, angled sails create sky art, that throws ever-changing shadows throughout the day, Anderson said.
Skokie native and Chicago real estate agent Mehdi Mova traded up to a bigger condo in April specifically to gain a spacious walkout terrace for private entertaining. As he and his family settle in, they’ll be evaluating the intensity of the sun, given the building’s southwest-facing space in the West Loop. It’s likely that they’ll install a pergola or some other semi-permanent shade structure that’s allowed by the condo’s covenants, he said.
The most organic form of shade is also the least dependable. Trees and tall shrubs block the sun in predictable patterns throughout the year, but weather undermines their reliability for sun protection, said Julie Janoski, who manages the plant clinic at the Morton Arboretum in west suburban Lisle.
Horticulturists term light in a gradient from “full sun,” which is six hours of unguarded sun a day, to “woodland shade,” which is dappled or filtered, to “dense shade,” which is “where sun literally never touches the ground, such as on the north side of a house,” Janoski said.
Wind-tossed branches shatter the best-laid shade plans, she said, not to mention bugs and borers that can crumble shade on the branch. “When you use nature as your protection, there aren’t consistent shade patterns,” she said.
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