Total Screen is a San Diego company that installs, repairs, and replaces window and door screens for homes across Southern California. The work is narrow on purpose, and the site reflects it: this is a screen specialist, not a general handyman outfit that happens to do screens on the side. If you live in or near San Diego and you have a torn slider screen, a door that bangs shut, or windows throwing heat where you do not want it, this is the kind of local shop the work points toward.
Screen door types and retractable repairs
The door side of the Total Screen catalog is the easiest to picture. The company handles retractable screen doors that roll out of sight when you do not need them, sliding screens for patio openings, hinged screen doors, and heavier security screen doors built to take some abuse. The retractable models are worth singling out because Total Screen describes itself as authorized to install and repair the brands it carries. With retractables specifically, the mechanism is the part that fails. An installer set up to service the brand can fix a jammed cassette later instead of telling you to buy a whole new unit. A lot of buyers learn that distinction the hard way after a bargain install, so seeing it stated up front is a point in the company's favor.
Solar and security window screens
Window screens get a fuller treatment than the usual replace-the-mesh pitch, and this is where Total Screen separates itself from a generic glass shop. Beyond standard replacements, there are solar screens aimed at cutting heat and glare, which is a sensible product for inland San Diego sun, and security window screens for ground-floor openings. Two of the offerings stand out because they answer problems most people do not know have a name. One is a product called Tuff Mesh, marketed against artificial turf melting from window reflection, a real and expensive headache where low-e glass can focus enough heat to scorch a lawn.
Ember vent mesh for fire risk
The other is an Ember Vent mesh built to keep wind-driven embers from getting in through vents, a direct nod to fire risk in this part of California. Whoever decides what to stock is clearly paying attention to what actually goes wrong on local houses, and that told me more about the operation than any tagline would.
Motorized sun shades beyond screens
The Total Screen range stretches a bit past screens into motorized sun shades and retractable awnings, including motorized retractable sun screens for patios and large openings. That keeps it inside the same shade-and-screen world, so it reads as adjacent work the same crew can handle, not a scattershot attempt to be everything. The service area is stated plainly as Southern California with San Diego called out directly, which sets honest expectations about who can actually book them.
Customer testimonials on product pages
Here is where a careful reader should slow down. Total Screen publishes its own customer testimonials on its product pages, and some of them are specific in the way good ones are: they name an installer (Frank) and they talk about screens holding up over multiple years. Specificity like that is more persuasive than a wall of generic five-star blurbs, and the durability angle is exactly what you want to hear before paying for an install you expect to last.
Checking reviews beyond the website
The catch is that those testimonials are self-published, meaning the company chose and posted them. That is not dishonest, plenty of reputable shops do it, but it is not the same as independent proof. A search for outside verification came up nearly empty: one Facebook review, unrated, and no Google profile, Yelp page, Trustpilot entry, or BBB listing. For a home-services company where strangers are letting a crew into their house, that absence is the real soft spot. It does not mean the work is bad. It means a prospective customer cannot lean on a body of third-party feedback to confirm it and has to rely on the company's own word plus whatever references they can ask for directly.
So the credibility rests heavily on the substance of the offering, not on a track record you can audit from the outside. The product knowledge on display is genuine and locally tuned. The crowd-sourced reputation simply is not there yet, and an honest review has to weigh both.
Contact with Total Screen is phone-first. A number is published, the city and ZIP are shown, and there is a page for leaving a review. No street address appears on the homepage, and a Gmail address surfaces only on the Facebook page, not the main site. For a screen installer that comes to you rather than hosting you in a showroom, the physical-address gap is minor. The phone-forward setup fits the trade, where a quick conversation about your specific opening and measurements does more work than an intake form.
One thing worth noting about how Total Screen presents itself is the restraint. The focus stays on screens and shade, the local problems it solves are named in plain terms, and there is no attempt to look bigger than a regional specialist. That honesty of scope makes the few specifics it does give, the authorized brand service, the turf-melt and ember products, the named long-term references, land as more believable than a slicker but vaguer competitor would.
A San Diego area homeowner with a concrete screen problem, especially a tricky one like retractable repair, reflection burn on a lawn, or ember-rated venting, will find a shop that clearly understands those exact issues. Someone shopping purely on independent reviews, wanting a solid stack of verified ratings, will come up short and should plan to ask for direct references or recent local jobs to fill that gap. The smart move is to call, describe your opening in detail, and ask whoever answers to point you to a couple of nearby installs you can confirm.
The verdict lands somewhere honest and qualified. Total Screen looks like a competent, focused, locally aware screen specialist with products that solve real Southern California problems and an installer who knows the retractable mechanisms well enough to service them after the sale. The weakness is verification: outside the company's own pages the public record is close to nonexistent, and the contact footprint is lighter than ideal. If the specialty products match what your house needs, Total Screen is worth a phone call, with the sensible caveat that you do the reference-checking the internet cannot yet do for you.
