Question 1

Is your shade motorized or cordless?

Accepted Answer

They fail for unrelated reasons and share no parts. Motorized — it has a motor and a power source. You raise it with a remote, an app, or a button. There is a battery wand, a battery tube, a plug-in transformer or a solar panel somewhere. PowerView and PowerRise are the motorized systems. Cordless — no motor, no remote, no batteries. You raise it by pushing the bottom rail up with your hand. The lift is a spring and a cord spool inside the rails. Not sure? Look for a remote, or feel for a battery tube in the headrail. If you have been lifting the shade by hand for years, it is cordless. If it is cordless, we cannot help you, and here is why A cordless shade that will not stay up, or will not go up, has lost cord tension inside the lift mechanism. There is no battery and no electronics. Nothing we sell touches it. That is a mechanism repair — Hunter Douglas, your original dealer, or an independent blind repair shop. We would rather send you to the right place than sell you a battery wand for a shade that has no battery. Everything below this line is about motorized shades only.

Question 2

What is the thirty-second check on a motorized shade?

Accepted Answer

Press the button and put your ear near the headrail. Total silence, nothing at all → no power is reaching the motor. That is the battery wand, the batteries, or the cable. This is the most common cause by a wide margin, and it is the one we can fix. A hum, a grind, or a click with no movement → power is arriving and the motor is failing to turn it into movement. A new wand will not help you. It sends the same power to the same motor. It moves, but not all the way → that is a travel limit or an obstruction, not power. Reset the limits — the six-second reset in the stuck-halfway section below. Nothing happens, but other shades obey the same remote → that is a lost pairing, not power. Re-pair it first. See remote not working . That one detail — whether you can hear it trying — settles most of these. A wand is a battery holder and a lead. It either delivers power or it does not.

Question 3

Why does my shade go down but not up?

Accepted Answer

Because raising takes far more current than lowering does. Gravity does half the work on the way down. So a shade with a weak power source often develops exactly this symptom: it drops fine, then struggles or refuses on the way back up. It looks like a mechanical fault. It is usually a power fault, and it is the clearest early warning you get that the wand or the batteries are going. Two causes: The batteries are low, or mismatched. PowerView wires every cell in series, so the whole string behaves like its weakest member. Eleven good cells and one tired one gives you eleven tired cells. Try a full set of fresh, identical, name-brand AAs before anything else — see lithium or alkaline . The wand itself is failing. Corroded contacts raise resistance. There is enough current to lower the shade and not enough to lift it. Pull the wand and look inside: white or green crust, or cells that will not slide out, means the wand is finished and cleaning it only buys weeks.

Question 4

Why won't my shade go down?

Accepted Answer

The mirror image, and a different answer. A shade that goes up but will not come down is almost never power. Lowering takes the least current the motor ever draws — gravity is helping — so a power source too weak to lower the shade would have stopped it going up long before. If it climbs, it has power. So look for the things that stop a shade from being allowed down: The bottom limit. The shade thinks it is already at the bottom. Run Hunter Douglas's calibration reset: press and hold the programming button on the headrail for about six seconds until the shade jogs, let go, and let it travel to fully open and fully closed on its own. If it still stops short, the lower limit needs setting. An obstruction. Something in the fabric stack, a cord caught in the headrail, a bottom rail resting on a sill or a window handle. The motor senses the resistance and stops. On a cordless shade, the cord lock. No motor, no batteries; a lift that will not release is the mechanism, and it is a blind repair shop's job, not ours. A wand will not fix any of those. It is a battery holder.

Question 5

Why is my shade stuck halfway?

Accepted Answer

Two causes, and the order of checking is Hunter Douglas's own: power first, then the reset, then the limits. Weak batteries stop shades mid-travel. A string of tired cells can start a move and then fail under load partway through it — often with the squeal or slowdown that low voltage produces just before it quits. Fit a complete set of fresh, identical, name-brand AAs, all at once; never top up a mixed set. Then run the six-second calibration reset — hold the programming button on the headrail until the shade jogs, release, and let it run to fully open and fully closed — so the shade finds its limits again. Those are Hunter Douglas's first two steps for a stuck shade, and neither costs more than a pack of batteries. It stops at the same point every time. That is not power; that is a travel limit, or something physically in the way at that height. Fresh cells will not move it and neither will a wand. Reset the limits, or clear whatever it is hitting. If a fresh matched set and a reset leave it stuck, and it fades or squeals before it stops, the wand is dropping the voltage before it reaches the motor — is it the wand? covers the signs.

Question 6

My Duette honeycomb shade won't go up — is that different?

Accepted Answer

The diagnosis is the same, but one thing about Duette and Applause honeycomb lines is worth knowing: Hunter Douglas built them with both wands over the years. Some take the 18V twelve-cell, some take the 12V eight-cell. So do not order from a chart, including ours. Count the batteries in the old wand — twelve or eight — and order to match. Full detail on the Duette honeycomb fitment page . Older PowerRise 1.0 Duettes, made before May 2010, may still have the original eight-cell single-barrel tube, part 2981097000. Hunter Douglas only treats it as serviceable while its bracket assembly is intact. If the tube or bracket has failed, its documented fix is an external retrofit built around the 12V battery pack 7520069000, with mounting kit KIT8105, an extension cable and power cable 2920247000. Our battery tube conversion kit does the same job of moving the batteries outside the headrail. Other PowerRise 1.0 lines differ: Vignette made before May 2010 converts to the 18V wand plus power cable 2920247000, and Silhouette and Nantucket made before May 2010 use Hunter Douglas kit KIT9112. The PowerRise 1.0 page has each line.

Question 7

My motorized blinds stopped working all at once — what happened?

Accepted Answer

Usually nothing dramatic. A house of shades installed on the same day runs the same batteries, and they reach the end of their life within a few weeks of each other. If several shades have gone quiet in the same season, pull one wand and look at the cells. You are probably looking at a whole-house battery replacement rather than a fault — and if any of those cells have leaked, those wands are gone too. That situation is covered properly in bought a house with PowerView shades , including how to identify a dozen of them at once without pulling every headrail apart.

Question 8

Which wand do I need?

Accepted Answer

Count the batteries in the old one. That is the whole test and it takes thirty seconds. Twelve AA → the 18V wand, part 7520068000 Eight AA → the 12V wand, part 7520069000 Not the age of the shade, not the line, not the room. Voltage and cell count are the only things that have to match. The replacement guide covers every line and the exceptions.

Hunter Douglas Shade Won't Go Up or Down