Most people conceive of an awning for home as a metal frame holding open a stretched shade fabric. Some awnings have fixed frames and others are retractable. Usually they are placed over a window or door to shade not only against incoming sun, but also the area immediately adjacent. Modern variants may have remote controls that allow opening and closing with needing to adjust anything manually.

Despite the conveniences offered, many homeowners are reluctant to install traditional awnings due to the costs. The structure itself is quite expensive, and the installation even more so given the complexity and size of the product. A very modest home awning can cost thousands of dollars. Worse still, the shade fabric will require regular cleaning as it’s a repository for microorganisms and dirt. This is complicated by the inaccessibility of the top of the fabric.

One final problem is that the homeowner might occasionally find that the fixed outdoor shades are not flexible enough if guests or family members don’t want to be anchored to a fixed awning. For example, a barbeque event may be held far from the house itself, but there’s no way to shade it with the awning because it has only finite reach.

The answer to these issues lies in a less elaborate type of outdoor shade: the unattached awning. The metallic frame of the unattached awning stands alone, on a set of wheels which allows it to be ported around. The awning doesn’t have to be installed anywhere, and is usually very easy to set up. For events and gatherings away from the immediate locality of the house, the portable and unattached awning can be moved to where it’s desired.

Among all the outdoor shades, the freestanding awning may be the easiest to clean. This is due to it dual configuration construction. In one configuration, the shade is overhead doing its jobs shading some area from the sun. In the other configuration, the shade is be turned and pivoted so the fabric is vertical, much like how portable blackboards have a swinging center board that can be flipped. The type of cleaning agents used are the same for normal shade fabrics.

These unattached types of outdoor shades are much cheaper for two reasons. One reason is that it’s installation requires no special expertise, such as drilling into the frame of a house or wiring up the retractable mechanism. Another reason is that the construction is much simpler so the costs of production are lower. Best yet, because it’s not attached to a fixed structure, the unattached awning can be moved around as desired to where it’s needed most.

Find out more about outdoor shades by directly reading our site. Additional resources provided for outdoor shades can be read here.