How To Choose The Right Window Blinds And Shades
3 Key Starting Points When Choosing Window Blinds, Shades Or Any Window Coverings
Functionality – the specific service you want the product to do for you
Suitability - match your home décor or add accents
Cost & Satisfaction – need to fit your decorating tastes without breaking the bank while making this do-it-yourself decorating project a pleasing one
9 Versatile Functions Blinds, Shades and Shutters Provide
- Establish privacy.
- Virtually eliminate, filter or vary the amount of light coming into the room.
- Protect hardwood floors, furniture, valuable paintings or artwork, and delicate household décor from damaging UV rays.
- Insulate by creating a single or multiple layers of air over the window area.
- Cover an unsightly window view with a functional and more pleasant-to-look-at shade or covering.
- Reduce noise.
- Cover doors with full or partial glass (e.g. entrance or patio doors).
- Shade skylights or irregularly-shaped windows economically and with ease.
- Highlight and extend your personal home decor preferences with a wide range of choices of materials, colors, textures and specific functional designs to suit your style.
Do you need to consider whether your windows are facing North, South, East or West?
As many rooms in modern houses do often have windows facing all or at least 3 of the directions, it is likely going to be a choice of a single, more universal type of blind that suits your application.
Having several different types of blinds in each of the same room’s window may create a mismatched look.Many customers get around the ‘mismatched look’ by going with a single type of product they like. They add a privacy liner, UV blocker or heat-reflecting foil (if the options are available).
Four Window Exposures … and a few suggestions regarding the choices you have:
Northern Exposure
Steady light and lower temperatures exposure.
Energy-efficient coverings are your best choice: e.g. single or multi-cellular (honeycomb) or pleated shades. They also filter out some light.
Southern Exposure
Solid light most of the year.
UV rays are the concern here. Consider light-filtering blinds that will help protect your furniture, upholstery, etc. Good quality cellular or pleated shades can be used as well as sun-blocking or shading (sunscreen) roller blinds. Top-Down Bottom-Up cellular shades provide you with the option to still see out if you want to. Vertical or horizontal blinds allow you to control the incoming amount of light while keeping your view.
Eastern Exposure
Rise and shine.
A jolt of first morning light pierces your bedroom and you’d prefer to catch a few more zees? Choose a blackout feature. Cellular, pleated and roller blinds made with light-blocking materials do the job. If you are on a strict budget, horizontal mini blinds with a blackout feature* will be enough.
FYI*The ‘blackout’ feature is accomplished by punching the lift-cord holes at the outer edge (window-side) of each metal slat. When the slats are closed, the punched lift holes are covered by the overlapping slat edges.
Regular horizontal slats have the lift-cord holes punched in the middle of their width (front to back), allowing the light to shine through.
Western Exposure
Plenty of light and hot sunshine.
Sunscreen roller blinds with decorative valances work very well in this application. Or, heat-blocking aluminum foil ad-ons in cellular, top-down bottom-up shades work fine as well if the heat is intense.
How To Save Money On In-Home Energy Costs With Blinds
Window coverings can actually save you money by insulating your windows. During hot days of summer blinds can reflect the heat away from your house windows while during cold days of winter they can keep the heat from escaping out through the thin window panes.Any type of window blind provides a degree of insulation. Some are better than others.
Take a look at insulating properties of the most popular blinds (in a closed position covering the window):
Type Rating
Roller Shades
Good to Excellent
Cellular Shades
Good to Excellent
Roman Shades
Good to Excellent
Wood Blinds
Good to Very Good
Faux Wood Blinds
Good to Very Good
Pleated Shades
Very Good
Horizontal Aluminum Binds
Good to Very Good
Vertical Blinds
Good to Very Good
Your choice of materials, their thickness and the number of layers will affect the insulating efficiency of the window coverings.
A single cell honeycomb shade is an inferior insulator to a double or triple-cell honeycomb blind. A single-layer woven woods blind or roman shade provides less insulation than one with a privacy liner, etc.
And last, but not least…
A correctly measured inside-mount fit for a blind will insulate much better than its outside-mount application.
*As much as blinds can do an excellent insulating job on your windows, they unfortunately can’t fix drafty ones.
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