Whether your facility has a playground, park, daycare or picnic area, shade structure canopies can protect you and your visitors from direct sunlight. Commercial shade structures are a better choice for outdoor shade than commercial umbrellas because they provide better wind resistance and can be designed in many styles, sizes and colors to complement any site’s color aesthetic. They also offer more structural integrity and are a great solution for protecting seating areas, sandboxes or other outdoor features on commercial or public properties.
A new playground canopy can create a dynamic, interesting space for play and socializing that is safe and accessible for students of all abilities. Playgrounds with accessibility components such as spinners, wheelchair ramps, adaptive swings and accessible surfacing help children with disabilities experience the joy of play alongside their peers. Bringing these elements to school playgrounds is a powerful way to show young people that everyone matters and their ideas and contributions are valuable.
The most important thing to remember when choosing a playground shade is to consider the needs of your community, especially during the peak sun hours of the day. Overexposure to UV rays is not only detrimental to health, but it can also make a playground or outdoor learning environment unusable for children and adults alike. UV levels increase at noon and decrease throughout the evening, so choosing a shade structure that provides sun protection from both sides during these peak times is ideal.
School playgrounds playground canopies nationwide are an ideal location for shade structures because of their frequent use by the entire student population. While some playground equipment with attached shades is convenient, it’s worth noting that they are far less effective in terms of UV protection than a stand-alone shade structure that can be moved around or removed as needed to ensure maximum sun coverage.
Shade canopies for schools are available in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, with domes, hips and sail shade designs to suit any school’s aesthetic. All our free-standing shade structures come with our patented Turn-N-Slide mechanism that makes it easy to fasten and remove the canopy without any tools. When shopping for a shade structure, make sure to ask if the tensioning mechanism is on every rafter corner as opposed to just some. Using a tensioning system that’s not on every rafter corner will cause the cable to bind and can lead to shade failure.