Before you start shopping around for curtains or blinds for your home's window dressing, you might want to think about shutters instead. There are many reasons to consider plantation shutters, the most popular style on the market, for your home no matter its overall décor. Since window dressing and treatments need to last for years and they need to be attractive as well as functional, note why shutters may be the right choice.
1. More hygienic option
Any type of fabric or upholstery in your home will hold cigarette smoke, pet hair and dander, shed skin cells and hair, dust, dirt and a host of other allergens or irritants. This is why it's often recommended that you take your curtains down and have them dry cleaned or otherwise laundered regularly, as often as you shampoo your carpets. This can be a costly process. While blinds may not hold as much debris as curtains, their small slats often make them difficult if not impossible to clean. This is why they are often neglected and in turn, dirt and even oil from cooking and other grime may build up.
Shutters are much cleaner because they are not made of fabric that will trap irritants, and their larger slats are easier to wipe down with just a damp rag than the tiny slats of blinds. When you open shutters you can also access them from the back for cleaning, which you can't do with blinds unless you actually take them off the windows. For a cleaner, more hygienic option in your home, opt for shutters.
2. Space savings and ease of use
Curtains can easily get in the way of foot traffic and may overwhelm a space, whereas shutters are smaller and more compact and can fit right into a window frame. If you have a smaller window or a smaller room, you may want to avoid adding curtains that can look too large for the area.
While blinds are also smaller than curtains, if you've ever struggled to open blinds with a cord, then you know why shutters can be a better choice. Cords for blinds are not only cumbersome but they are notorious for breaking, as they are pulling up the entire weight of the blinds every time you open them. Shutters can simply fold out and away from the window easily, and since they work with a hinge and not a delicate cord, you're less likely to need to replace your shutters as often as you would blinds.
Talk with someone at a company like Illawarra Blinds & Awnings to learn more about window treatments that could work best for your home.
