Motorized Deck Screens in Black Mountain, NC: Montreat to Highlands

Black Mountain sits a little above 2,300 feet, fifteen miles east of Asheville, right where the Black Mountain range starts to climb. Up here the deck is where you live from April into October. Motorized deck screens in Black Mountain, NC give you that deck back on the evenings when the bugs come up from the Swannanoa and the afternoons when the sun finds you through the trees.

The quick answer, if that's all you need: a motorized screen drops on a remote or through your smart home system, seals into a side track so nothing gets through, and rolls up out of sight when the weather is perfect. Most run $6,000 to $8,500 installed.

This post is for Black Mountain and Montreat first, and then for the mountain enclaves farther out. Sapphire, Cashiers, and Highlands are past our usual thirty miles, but we make the drive, and we'll explain why below.

Black Mountain and Montreat: screens for a cove

Montreat is a cove community at the foot of Greybeard Mountain. There's no commercial development in town, not even a traffic light. A lot of the cottages are second homes, used hard in summer and closed up for stretches in winter.

A screen that rolls into its housing when you leave is a screen that isn't sitting in the ice in February. That's the biggest reason we steer Montreat owners toward a motorized system over a fixed screened porch.

In Black Mountain proper, the homes range from older cottages near downtown to newer builds on the slopes with long views back toward the Swannanoa Valley. The view is the reason those decks exist. A fixed porch enclosure takes some of it away for good. A retractable screen takes none of it when it's up, and very little when it's down, because the mesh reads more like a shadow than a wall.

Since Hurricane Helene in 2024, many homeowners here have rebuilt decks and are thinking harder about what goes on them. A screen that's engineered for wind, with the mesh locked in a track, holds up in a way a stapled screen never will. Our post on whether exterior shades stand up to high winds goes into the engineering if you want it.

Sapphire, Cashiers, and Highlands: worth the drive

Highlands sits at 4,118 feet, which puts it among the highest incorporated towns east of the Mississippi. It's a two-season town, with a summer season that runs roughly March through November. Rainfall averages close to ninety inches a year, and some years it approaches a hundred. That's a temperate rainforest, and it means fog on the deck in the morning and mist rolling through at dinner.

Cashiers is lower, around 3,500 feet, and quieter: an unincorporated crossroads where people buy for privacy and open land. Sapphire is a bit lower again, a resort community built for second-home owners and families who want the mountains all four seasons.

Those three places share a problem that a good screen solves. The evenings are cool enough to sit out, but the bugs are thick in the wet months. The light comes across a ridge at an angle that finds every chair.

A motorized deck screen with a solar mesh handles the light, and an insect mesh handles the rest. Because the mesh is held in a keder side track, wind off the ridge moves it very little.

These are the homes people have saved for, on lots they picked for the view. That's why we make the drive. We schedule the measure and the install as planned trips.

Craftsmanship on a mountain deck

The screens we install run inside a keder sidetrack on both edges, so there's no gap at the sides and nothing to flap. The mesh keeps its own tension as it travels. Obstacle detection stops the motor if a chair or a dog is in the way. You control it from a remote, or through a smart home system such as Alexa or Google Home, which matters when the house is in Cashiers and you're in Atlanta.

The finish work is what you'll live with. The housing tucks up under the deck ceiling or mounts to the face of the beam, so the screen reads as part of the structure.

On a timber-frame deck where the posts aren't perfectly plumb, and they rarely are, the tracks get fitted to the post you have. That's the difference between a screen that looks built-in and one that looks bolted on.

Mesh for a wet climate

In Highlands and Sapphire, we lean toward a solar and UV mesh for west-facing decks and an insect mesh for the rest. Both shed water and dry fast, which matters when it rains as often as it does above 3,000 feet. Privacy mesh is worth a look on a deck that sits close to a neighbor's, which happens more than you'd think on the tighter lots around Cashiers.

What motorized deck screens in Black Mountain, NC cost in 2026

Most motorized exterior screens we install run $6,000 to $8,500. The size of the opening, how many openings you're screening, and the mesh you pick set the price. A motorized retractable awning, if you want overhead shade too, runs $4,500 to $6,500. We quote a firm number after we measure, and the number holds.

On timing, and on the economy, since both come up. Aluminum has carried higher import tariffs through 2026, and prices on outdoor products have held firm. It's a product to buy once and buy well.

Fall and winter are the months when a second home is easiest to work on, because nobody's trying to use the deck. If you want the screens in place when you open the house in spring, ordering now is the way to get there.

Give the deck back to the people who own it

A deck in Black Mountain or a porch in Montreat is a lot of money in wood and railing to give up to gnats and glare. A motorized screen is the way to keep using what you've already built.

Book a free in-home measure through our motorized screens page, or call (828) 770-9010. If you're weighing sun and shade first, our post on how mountain sun affects outdoor living is a good place to start. We'll come out to Black Mountain and Montreat any week, and we'll plan the trip to Sapphire, Cashiers, or Highlands around your schedule.