The short answer

In most cases the fix is an outside mount. A NYC window guard sits inside the opening and projects into it, so an inside-mount shade or blind will hang up on the top bar of the guard and never close fully. Mounting the treatment outside the opening, above and wider than the frame, lets it clear the guard completely. Never remove, cut, or modify a guard to accommodate a window treatment. That is illegal in New York City, and it is how children fall.

This is the most common installation problem nobody writes about. A family measures a window, orders shades, and then discovers on install day that the shade stops six inches short of the sill because there is a metal guard in the way. Vick has been running our installations since 2014 and he has walked into that room more times than I can count.

It is entirely solvable. It just has to be solved before fabrication, not after.

What NYC law actually requires

Window guards in New York City are governed by Health Code Section 131.15 and Administrative Code Section 27-2043.1, with the detailed specifications in Title 24 of the Rules of the City of New York, Chapter 12. New York was the first city in the country to adopt a window guard policy, back in 1976.

Who is covered. Any residential building with three or more apartments. Count units, not floors. A three-unit walk-up is covered. A two-family townhouse is not, regardless of height. The obligation falls on the owner, and the code names condominium unit owners and cooperative boards of directors specifically.

When guards are required. Where a child ten years of age or younger resides, or whenever a tenant or occupant requests them in writing, for any reason. You do not need to have children to request guards. Grandparents with visiting grandchildren, parents sharing custody, and anyone providing childcare can request them and the owner must install them.

Which windows. All of them, including first floor bathrooms and windows opening onto a balcony or terrace, plus public hallway and common area windows in buildings where a covered child resides. The exceptions are narrow: windows leading to fire escapes or other designated emergency escapes, a first-floor window that serves as a required secondary means of egress, and windows with a permanently installed air conditioner.

The specification. For double-hung windows, guards must be rigid metal, at least fifteen inches tall, with three or more horizontal bars spaced no more than four and a half inches apart, and each guard carries a Health Department approval number stamped on a vertical bar. No opening in the guarded window may leave more than four and a half inches of unguarded space.

The annual cycle. Owners deliver the annual notice between January 1 and January 16. Tenants return it by February 15. If a tenant does not respond, the owner must inspect by March 1 to determine whether a covered child lives there.

Who pays. The owner. Always.

Two things worth stating plainly because they come up constantly: screens are not window guards and never have been, and tenants are not permitted to remove guards to install an air conditioner.

The law works. Before it passed, New York saw more than a hundred falls in a typical year. In the last two decades the figure has been under twenty annually. In 2021 there were nine falls among children ten or younger, one of them fatal, and seven of those nine happened because guards were improperly installed rather than absent.

That last statistic is the reason this article exists. The failure mode is almost never a missing guard. It is a guard that somebody adjusted.

Why your shade will not close

Here is the mechanical problem, and once you see it, it is obvious.

A window guard mounts inside the window opening, spanning the jambs, and it projects into the room. The horizontal bars sit in the plane where an inside-mount shade wants to travel.

So when you lower an inside-mount roller shade, cellular shade, or Roman shade, one of three things happens:

The bottom rail lands on the guard. The shade stops fifteen to twenty inches above the sill and simply will not go further. You have paid for a treatment that covers two thirds of your window.

The fabric is held off the glass. Even where it clears, the guard pushes the fabric forward, so the shade bows out and you get a permanent light gap down both sides and a distorted profile.

The blind will not tilt. Horizontal blind slats need clearance to rotate. A guard bar sitting in that arc means the slats catch, and forcing them bends them.

None of this is a defect in the shade. It is a depth conflict that should have been caught at the measure.

The fixes, in the order we recommend them

1. Outside mount. The default answer, and usually the best one. Mount the treatment on the wall or casing above and outside the opening, wider than the frame on both sides. The treatment travels entirely in front of the guard, closes fully, covers the opening completely, and actually gives you better light control than an inside mount would have, because there is no reveal gap at the edges. It also hides the guard when closed, which most clients like.

The trade-off is that the treatment is more visually prominent and you need wall space around the window. In most NYC apartments you do.

2. Drapery on a track or rod. Panels hang in front of everything, so guards are a non-issue. Mount high and wide, use a proper return so the panel wraps back to the wall, and it reads intentional rather than like a workaround. If the guard is on a window with a radiator underneath, go sill or apron length rather than floor length, and commit to the shorter length rather than stopping an inch above the floor.

3. Inside mount above the guard, accepting a partial drop. Occasionally the right answer, usually in a bathroom or a kitchen where you want privacy at the top of the window and the guard is not visually offensive. Be clear about what you are buying: the shade will stop where the guard starts. Some clients are genuinely fine with this. Most are not, and we would rather they know in the showroom than on install day.

4. Top-down bottom-up, mounted outside. Worth mentioning because it solves a specific case well. If your window faces a courtyard or a close neighbor and you want privacy at eye level while keeping daylight from above, a top-down bottom-up cellular shade on an outside mount gives you that without ever interacting with the guard.

5. Motorization. Not a fix for the depth conflict, but relevant here for a different reason covered below.

What you must never do

I want to be blunt about this section, because the 2021 data says it matters more than everything else in this article.

Do not remove a guard, even temporarily, to install a treatment. Not for an hour, not for the installer’s convenience, not for the season.

Do not cut, bend, trim, or drill a guard to make clearance for a bracket or a bottom rail. It voids the Health Department approval, and it converts a tested device into an untested one.

Do not mount brackets to the guard or to its mounting hardware. Guard mounting is engineered to hold against a specific load. Adding a treatment to it compromises both.

Do not block a removable guard’s release mechanism. Some approved guards are designed to come out for emergency egress. A treatment that prevents that release is a fire safety problem, and a valance or cornice is the usual culprit.

Do not obstruct a fire escape window. These windows are exempt from the guard requirement precisely because they are an emergency exit, which means they must stay clear. A heavy treatment, a wide stack of drapery, or a fixed cornice over a fire escape window is exactly the wrong choice. Use something light that gets fully out of the way, and keep the operating hardware reachable.

If a window treatment company suggests any of the above to you, end the conversation. We have turned down work over this and would do it again.

The air conditioner complication

This one is specific to New York and it catches people every year.

A window with a permanently and securely installed air conditioner is treated differently from an unguarded window, and tenants are not permitted to pull guards to fit an AC unit. But many New York households install a unit in May and remove it in October, which means the window’s configuration changes twice a year.

A window treatment sized around a summer AC installation will not fit the winter condition, and vice versa. If you have a seasonal AC window, tell your installer at the measure. The usual answer is an outside mount sized to the full opening plus the unit, so nothing has to change when the AC comes out.

Cords are a separate hazard, and they are the one people forget

Window guards address falls. They do nothing about cords.

A looped cord or a long chain on a shade near a crib, a bed, or anything climbable is an independent strangulation risk, and it exists whether or not a guard is installed. In a room where you have gone to the trouble of guarding the windows, leaving a corded treatment is an odd place to stop.

Our default recommendation for any room a young child uses is cordless operation, or motorization, which removes the operating cord entirely and has the side benefit of keeping the child away from the window in the first place. Where a cord is unavoidable, it needs a tensioner anchored to the wall and it needs to be genuinely out of reach, not merely wrapped around a cleat that somebody will stop using by March.

More in our guide to child-safe window blinds.

While you are thinking about the room: do not place a bed, a dresser, a toy chest, a window seat, or anything else climbable directly beneath a window, guarded or not. A guard is the last line of defense, not the first.

If you are a board member or a managing agent

A few things worth knowing from the treatment side.

Common area windows are your direct responsibility. Public hallway and common area windows require guards where a covered child resides in the building, and those are also the windows where treatment decisions are made by the board rather than by residents. Specify the guard and the treatment together.

Put it in the alteration agreement. Most buildings already specify what residents may do at the windows, and many require a white or neutral liner facing the street for facade uniformity. Adding a line requiring outside-mount treatments where guards are present, and prohibiting any modification of a guard, costs nothing and prevents a category of problem before it starts.

Vet the installer. Ask directly how they handle guarded windows. The answer should be some version of “we mount outside and we do not touch the guard.” Anyone who offers to work around it is a liability.

Confirm current specifications. The approved device list and the detailed rules in 24 RCNY Chapter 12 are updated from time to time. Verify current requirements with the Health Department rather than relying on what your building did a decade ago.

Frequently asked

Can I have inside-mount shades if I have window guards? Usually not in a way you will be satisfied with. The shade will stop where the guard begins. Outside mount is the standard solution and it generally looks and performs better anyway.

Can the installer take the guard off for the installation and put it back? No. Do not permit it. Beyond the legal issue, reinstallation is where guards fail, and improperly installed guards accounted for most of the falls in the most recent figures I have seen.

Do I need window guards if my child is eleven? The requirement covers children ten years of age or younger, meaning through age ten. That said, any occupant can request guards in writing for any reason, and the owner has to install them.

We own a two-family townhouse. Are we exempt? The mandate applies to buildings with three or more apartments, so a two-family house is outside it regardless of how many floors it has. Exempt from the mandate is not the same as safe, and guards are inexpensive.

Who pays for window guards, and who pays if a treatment has to be redone because of them? The building owner is responsible for providing, installing, and maintaining guards. The window treatment is yours. This is precisely why the guard needs to be discussed at the measure appointment rather than discovered at installation.

Can I use curtains instead of shades to avoid the whole problem? Yes, and it is a perfectly good answer. Panels hang in front of the guard entirely. Just keep the treatment clear of any fire escape window and keep cords out of reach.

Will a window treatment hide the window guard? An outside-mount shade or drapery covers it completely when closed. Bear in mind that the guard still needs to be visible enough for you to notice if it works loose, so check it periodically rather than forgetting it is there.

A note on scope

This is a practical guide to installing window treatments alongside window guards, not legal advice or a compliance determination. For the current rules, approved device list, and your specific obligations, go to the source:

If guards are missing, loose, or improperly installed, file a complaint online or call 311.

Before you order anything

Send us a photo of the window with the guard in it, or mention it when we come to measure. It takes thirty seconds and it changes the specification. We would much rather build the right thing once.

Schedule a free consultation, or visit the showroom at 447 W 50th Street.

Moria Leiderman is a principal at Alluring Window, the custom window treatment workroom her family has run in New York City since 2009. She holds a BA from Bar Ilan University and an MA in Psychology from CUNY, and has been specifying window treatments for New York homes, offices, and hotels since 2013.