Somfy Motors & Wind Sensors: How a Modern Awning Thinks for Itself

Inside the Motorized Awning

A retractable awning looks simple from the patio: the fabric rolls out, then rolls back in. What actually makes that happen without a hand crank is a small industrial motor hidden inside the roller tube, working alongside a layer of sensing hardware that decides — without anyone touching a button — when the fabric should be extended and when it shouldn't be. That combination of motor and sensor is what separates a modern motorized retractable awning from the manual crank-arm systems that dominated the category for decades.

Breslow installs SummerSpace and Aristocrat awning lines across the region, and on nearly every current project the homeowner chooses motorization. The reasons are practical rather than indulgent: a motorized system can respond to weather in seconds, at any hour, whether someone is standing on the patio or three states away.

Retractable awnings themselves are one of the oldest product categories Breslow carries — a decades-long line long before louvered pergolas entered the picture. What's changed over that time isn't the basic idea of a fabric that extends and retracts; it's how much of that decision-making has moved off the homeowner's plate and onto the system itself. A manual awning still requires someone to notice the weather and act on it. A motorized, sensored one increasingly doesn't.

Somfy: The Motor Standard

Somfy motors are the standard drive system across the awning lines Breslow carries. The motor sits inside the roller tube — the aluminum cylinder the fabric winds around — so there's no exposed gearbox or housing hanging off the frame. From the outside, the only evidence a motor exists at all is that the fabric moves on its own.

These are tubular motors, purpose-built for the load and duty cycle an awning actually sees: short bursts of movement repeated thousands of times over the system's working life, with no maintenance beyond what the frame and fabric already require. A handheld remote typically ships standard, with a wall-mounted switch and multi-channel remotes available for households running more than one shaded opening.

It's worth noting that this isn't a Breslow-specific choice made in isolation. Somfy motorization has become close to an industry standard across quality awning manufacturers precisely because tubular motors are reliable in a way exposed, aftermarket-bolted motors historically weren't. When a component becomes the default across an entire premium category rather than one brand's marketing point, that's usually a sign it's earned the position on merit.

Wind Sensors and Auto-Retract

Of every accessory available on a motorized awning, a wind sensor is the one most worth having. It's a small unit, usually mounted near the roller tube, that reads wind conditions in real time and signals the motor to retract automatically once gusts pass a level the system is set to tolerate — whether or not anyone is home to notice.

The logic is straightforward: fabric under load in a gust behaves like a sail, and it's the arms and frame that take the brunt of that force at full extension. Retracted, none of that hardware is exposed to the same strain. A wind sensor removes the guesswork — and the need for a homeowner to spot a storm building and remember to bring the awning in — by making retraction automatic.

Consider the scenario a wind sensor is actually built for: an afternoon thunderstorm rolling in while the house is empty, no one home to hear the wind pick up against the siding. A manual awning stays extended through whatever the storm brings. A motorized system with a functioning sensor has already retracted before the first gust reaches the threshold it's set to respect. The difference isn't dramatic in most seasons — but it only takes one storm to make the sensor worth every bit of its cost.

Ask your contractor: is the wind sensor included, or is it something I have to request separately? On a system meant to run unattended for years, it shouldn't be an afterthought.

“We usually leave it here and then if we're gone for the day and it starts to rain, the sensors close it for us.”
— Homeowners, Fairfield County CT · watch real client clips

Sun Automation

Wind sensors get most of the attention because they protect the hardware, but sun sensors solve a different problem entirely: convenience. A sun sensor extends the awning automatically as direct light and heat build against the house, then retracts it as the sun moves off or clouds roll in. Paired together, wind and sun sensors let an awning behave the way a homeowner would manage it manually — if someone were standing there watching the sky all day.

This matters most for households that travel often or work full days away from home. The awning still does its job — shading the patio doors, keeping a room cooler through the afternoon — without anyone present to operate it. It also solves a smaller but real annoyance: the awning that stays retracted on a bright Saturday morning simply because no one thought to press a button before leaving for errands. Automation removes that gap between when shade would help and when someone actually remembers to create it.

Controls: Remote, Switch, App

Sensors handle the automatic side of things; manual control still matters for override. Every motorized system Breslow installs ships with a handheld remote, and most households add a wall-mounted switch near the door so there's always a control point that can't be misplaced. App-based control is available on select systems for households that want the awning folded into an existing smart-home routine — useful, but not the piece doing the protective work. That's still the sensor.

The practical value of having more than one control point shows up in small moments: a remote that's been misplaced under a couch cushion, a guest who wants to help close things up before leaving, a homeowner checking on the house from a phone while traveling. None of these replace the sensor's job. They simply mean the system is never dependent on a single point of access when someone does want to intervene manually.

What This Means for Lifespan

An awning extended through a storm it should have avoided ages faster: bent arms, stressed fabric, a motor working against resistance it was never built for. Motorization paired with sensors is, in practical terms, as much a lifespan decision as a convenience one — which is why Breslow's designers walk through motor and sensor options as part of every consultation rather than treating them as line items added at the end.

The math is simple even without hard numbers attached to it: a frame and fabric that never take a hit from an unretracted storm simply last longer than one that occasionally does. Motorization doesn't change the underlying materials — it changes how consistently the system is used the way it was designed to be used, which over years of ownership tends to matter more than any single spec on a data sheet.

Breslow scopes every awning system — motor, sensors, controls, fabric, and frame — during a free design consultation that starts on Zoom. There's no obligation, and it's the fastest way to see what a properly sensored, motorized system looks like on your own patio.