Walk into a luxury home in 2026 and one of two things is true: there is a giant flat-panel television dominating the room, or there is a Screen Innovations projection screen disappearing into the architecture. The Austin, Texas company spent the last two decades making the second option possible, and a series of moves in late 2025 and early 2026 suggest the team is just getting started.
This is a closer look at Screen Innovations—the company, the catalog, and the news driving their next chapter.
Origins: Black Diamond and the End of the Dark-Room Rule
Founder Ryan Gustafson started Screen Innovations on a premise that sounded mildly heretical to traditional home theater designers: projection should not require a sealed, blacked-out room. After more than three years of materials research, SI introduced Black Diamond in 2008, the first multi-layered ALR (Ambient Light Rejection) screen capable of holding contrast with the lights on.
The company has been compounding on that idea ever since. The optics page on SI's site puts the thesis plainly: "We don't really care if you just buy a screen from us. We care that you buy the right screen and the right projector for your environment." That phrase shows up in dealer meetings, training rooms, and the company's CEDIA booth year after year.
The 2026 Catalog: Screens, Shades, and the SI Ecosystem
What started as one screen material is now a layered product line. SI's current motorized roster includes the Solo 3 indoor short-throw cassette, the Zero-G Pro tab-tensioned ceiling-recessed screen, and the KAOS high-wind outdoor shade line that expanded to 24-foot widths in 2025. On the fixed side, the Zero Edge Pro with the Black Diamond Fusion material delivers seamless ALR images up to 150-inch diagonal in 16:9.
The shade side of the business deserves its own paragraph. SI ships motorized roller shades under the Nano 2, Niño, and Origami names—the last of which offers triangles, trapezoids, pentagons, and rectangles for dealers building irregular window arrays. Their Wolf Drapery partnership, announced in August 2024, added premium drapery and Roman shading designed specifically for integrator workflows.
Tying it all together is the SI Ecosystem, debuted at CEDIA Expo 2023. It comprises power supplies (Kratos, Janus, Janus Plenum), control gateways (TRO.Y IP), and Zigbee-native interfaces—including a C4 Zigbee bridge for direct Control4 integration. The Suite XVI data hub stitches diagnostics and firmware management together so an integrator can monitor every SI product on a site from one pane.
Black Diamond Fusion: The "Holy Grail" of ALR
The headline product for the last 18 months has been Black Diamond Fusion ALR. It debuted at CEDIA 2024 in Denver and walked off with ProjectorCentral's Best of CEDIA 2024 Show Award. The press release language is unusually direct for the projection world: Fusion was engineered to solve the typical ALR trade-offs—narrow viewing angles, hot-spotting, texture, sparkle, and the need to over-spec the projector to compensate.
SI announced general availability in June 2025 and brought Fusion to the commercial side at InfoComm 2025 the following month. By August, it was the centerpiece of the company's CEDIA Expo 2025 booth (#2533). For integrators specifying ALR in well-lit great rooms and media spaces, Fusion is now the default reference point.
Made in Texas, Engineered for Integrators
One detail that gets overlooked: SI engineers and manufactures the optical materials themselves. The optics page notes that PVC-based materials like Slate are texture-managed nine times finer than standard white or gray screens—a specification SI argues is essential for 4K and 8K projection. The largest seamless Slate XL panel reaches 189 inches tall, which is how SI ended up supplying screen material to the International Space Station for projection on board the ISS.
The Austin location also drives a particular service ethic. Phone the SI line and you reach Austin, not an offshore call center. Walk a project review with an SI engineer and they tend to bring projector recommendations alongside the screen spec, because their conviction is that the screen-projector pairing is what dealers really need to get right.
2026 News: Leadership, Distribution, and Dealer Support
The first quarter of 2026 brought a series of moves that signal where SI is heading. On March 17, 2026, the company announced executive appointments: Adam Kelinsky was named Chief Operating Officer, Jay Woodi was named Director of Procurement, and Shannon Gustafson was elevated to Vice President of Sales. The release framed the moves as strengthening operations, supply chain, and sales leadership ahead of further international expansion.
Two weeks earlier, on March 2, 2026, SI announced a partnership with Phoenix Marketing Group (PMG) to deliver dealer support, training, and in-field expertise nationwide. For integrators who depend on field application engineers for tricky installs, this is meaningful—SI now has a dedicated rep network coordinating training and on-site help in every major U.S. market.
Late 2024's restructuring brought design services in-house, with SI building technical sales, support, and design support for its window-covering business. The pattern across all of these moves is consistent: SI keeps pulling more of the dealer-success workflow inside the company instead of relying on third parties.
Why This Partnership Matters to Restrepo Innovations
We spec Screen Innovations products on theaters, great rooms, primary suites, and outdoor entertaining spaces where the lighting situation is not negotiable. Black Diamond and Fusion are the screens we trust when a homeowner wants a 130-inch image and also wants to keep the chandelier on. The Nano, Niño, and KAOS shade lines slot into the same Crestron or Control4 system as the screens, which keeps our wiring schedule clean and our commissioning days predictable.
"Screen Innovations is one of the few manufacturers that approaches every project the way we do—as a problem to solve, not a SKU to ship. The Austin team builds the product, supports the dealer, and stays in the room until the install looks right. That alignment is rare, and it is why SI shows up on so many of our specs." — Michael Restrepo, Founder, Restrepo Innovations
If you are planning a media room, outdoor entertaining space, or whole-home shading package across New Jersey, New York, or Connecticut, we would welcome a conversation about how Screen Innovations products fit into the larger Crestron and Lutron ecosystem we design around. Schedule a complimentary consultation and let us walk you through the options.