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Choosing The Right Window Treatment For Your Home
When you’re furnishing your home, most of your thought and energy might go towards the choice of furniture and decor pieces for the various surfaces of the home. Sometimes, it’s easy to not give the windows as much attention as they need.
However, they can have just as big an impact on the aesthetic and feel of the room, not just from the natural light they provide but also the treatments that you use to decorate them. Here, we’re going to look at some of the window treatments you can select, what they add to your home, and what they take from it as well.
*Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.
Curtains
A very popular option, a good solid set of curtains can help you add a lot of privacy to the home. These typically hang from curtain rods above the window (which themselves can be used to highlight certain architectural styles) and can come in a wide range of thicknesses, patterns, styles, and shades.
You can get options like more sheer fabrics that don’t do much to add privacy or block out sunlight, but the more opaque options tend to be some of the best when it comes to both blocking light as well as helping to add some heating efficiency to the room, as they do a good job of preventing heat transfer through your windows. The specifics of which curtains you choose, as shown at House Beautiful, are going to play a huge role, however.
Blinds
As with curtains, there are many different types of blinds, which can affect how much you can control both the light and privacy that they offer. However, control is definitely one of the key elements of offerings from companies like ABC Blinds. With blinds, you have slats, which can be made of wood, plastic, or fabric, that you can adjust the angle of, controlling how much sunlight you let in.
You can also slide them along the roller to open the window up entirely. They’re a lighter and more minimalist treatment that has become a lot more popular in modern times. However, most types, except for blackout blinds, tend to let a little more light through than curtains. Curtains and blinds often get paired together for a best-of-both-worlds approach.
Roller shades
Blinds and curtains tend to close over a window horizontally, but windows that are taller than they are wider might benefit from a little control over how much exposure you get, vertically. Roller shades, also known as Roman shades, are a good example of window treatments that can do just that.
These are typically sheets of fabric that are on a roller that you can control so that you can have them roll down over the length of the window, or you can retract them back up into the roller itself. They tend to offer great coverage and light blocking for a window, but they don’t offer a lot of privacy when open.
Shutters
One of the more traditional window treatment choices, shutters like those from Open Shutters tend to be made from wood, or at the very least faux wood, and are closed over the windows much like doors. They typically have small slats in the wood that allow some light to get through them but don’t allow one to see inside or outside through them very easily.
As such, they’re great for privacy when closed, and they can really add to a classic aesthetic for the home, which can suit older-fashioned buildings. However, they don’t offer much in the way of control, they’re either shut or open, with no in-between to let you control how much light you let in through them.
Wood blinds
There are blinds that you can get like the ones mentioned above that have slats operated on a roller that can be operated horizontally. However, when we talk about ‘wood blinds’, we’re not typically talking about those types. These are more like the type of shutters mentioned above, where they’re in a wooden frame that is fitted over the window.
However, instead of only being completely open or closed like shutters, wood blinds allow you to adjust the slats, or blinds, within the frame so that you can better control how much light they let in. They don’t offer as much lighting potential as a standard set of blinds, but they’re a good in-between for blinds and shutters.
Drapes
While some people might class curtains and drapes as much the same type of thing, there does tend to be a distinction between them. Curtains are designed to be opened and closed much more easily as an everyday thing, while drapes tend to be a lot thicker, have a more formal style, and are used specifically to block out light or to help keep in the heat during the winter.
As such, they are typically not used as the single window treatment on a window but might be paired with things like blinds or roller shades. Most drapes tend to be double-lined, which can also make them a little more expensive than curtains.
Solar shades
A lightly more modern addition to the world of window treatments, solar shades do exactly what the name suggests: adding shade to the room from the sun. However, they don’t block out sunlight entirely. Rather, they act more akin to sunglasses, making sure that there isn’t a strong glare coming in through the windows will still allowing enough light for the purposes of visibility.
As such, they can be good for homes that have furniture that needs to be protected from too much direct sunlight and can add a little middle-ground between being totally in the shade or totally in the light. However, they don’t offer much in the way of privacy during the daytime, as it can be quite easy to see through them even from the outside.
You should give as much thought to selecting the right window treatments as you do everything in the home. Hopefully, the tips above help you do that.
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