blinds better than curtains or drapes?

[ray hampton]

I live in a small space with wonderful views. The girly side of me occasionally feels the need to put some frippery on a rod and place it over the windows. Insulated drapes would be nice in the winter but I don't like feeling like I live in a cave. I have horizontal blinds which I find aren't difficult to clean if I never bother to clean them. I like that I can adjust them to let some light in but still block the harsh sunlight we have here. Drapes would not work with my cats. The cats have never chewed or climbed on the blinds. One cat will climb on me in the wee hours of the morning to get me to raise the blinds so he can listen to/watch the birds wake up.

So, I guess I come down on the blinds side of the discussion. My female friends, I'm sure, wonder when I will "fix the place up" because I get those disapproving looks whenever they come to visit. Ask me how much I care . . . In my perfect world I would live WAY out in the country and there would be nothing covering my windows.

I f the world were perfect I would ask YOU to to build my house away from other houses

[Larry Edgerton]

Belinda

Our new house is 150 feet off of a seldom used gravel road, and it is 30 miles out the back door to the next house. People come in to check it out and are appalled at the four large windows and full length glass door in my bathroom. The door is for the outside shower. Two long windows will be at tub height, a clawfoot tub sunk in a marble slab that is also the widow sills. I will be able to sit in the tub and look at the garden or watch the elk in the back yard. Eat your heart out.

I may have to put blinds up for company I guess.........

Larry

[Larry Edgerton]

A word of caution on tight fitting drapes in cold climates.

I am seeing more and more problems with window sash rotting on the bottom in modern tight fitting house with infloor and to some extent baseboard heat. When the curtians fit too tightly condensation forms on the glass at the bottom of the sash, and with no air movement to carry it away it sits there and molds and causes paint failure and rot.

I noticed this in my current house with new Andersons, infloor heat, and a very tight envelope. In a room that we never open the curtians in the winter the sash were black in the spring. If I lift my curtians about 2" so air can stream through behind them, no problem. I checked on several of the houses that I have built that have the same setup, and in each one that the curtians were tight there was excess moisture buildup on the window, a couple that rot had already started.

This is one of the reasons that I switched to forced air on my new house. I do not have a humidifier in my current house, just two of us and we both work, so no breathing in the middle of the day, we do not cook a whole lot, and we still have a problem. I may be too tight.

Larry

[Ted Calver]

".... a clawfoot tub sunk in a marble slab...."Larry

From what I've seen on TV, those tubs are supposed to be installed in pairs, side by side

[Belinda Barfield]

Belinda

Our new house is 150 feet off of a seldom used gravel road, and it is 30 miles out the back door to the next house. People come in to check it out and are appalled at the four large windows and full length glass door in my bathroom. The door is for the outside shower. Two long windows will be at tub height, a clawfoot tub sunk in a marble slab that is also the widow sills. I will be able to sit in the tub and look at the garden or watch the elk in the back yard. Eat your heart out.

I may have to put blinds up for company I guess.........

Larry

Been there, done that, miss it tremendously. Years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I lived in my dream home (almost, there was a troll that lived in the basement). His and hers baths. Mine was all White Cararra marble. The huge whirlpool tub was open to the bathroom and the other three sides were glass from tub splash to ceiling, with glass overhead. It was like floating in the middle of nature. The fact that the wet bar was just on the other side of the door may have contributed to that sensation. I could relax and watch the deer wander through the yard, look at the stars, watch fireflies, watch the water ripple in the swimming pool . . . it was a little piece of heaven. I cried when I had to leave that house.

P.S. The best was when it was raining or we had a thunderstorm.

[Bill Cunningham]

We have drapes.... We also have a cat that can make it all the way to the ceiling..

[Gordon Eyre]

Probably the classiest and easiest to use are wooden shutters. They are also the most costly. If it were strictly up to my wife we would order them tomorrow. Problem is I have a lot of large windows and it would be $10,000.00 to have them installed.

[Jim Becker]

I always choose blinds over curtains, although we don't actually use either with the exception of our guest suite, preferring the bare window look. (No neighbors to worry about...)

[Leigh Costello]

About the only time we close the blinds in the living room is when we have overnight company. The office/guest room are only closed when we are hiding our accumulated treasures while entertaining. The master bedroom is often closed on one side because of neighbors with nosy tendencies but the north facing window is 35 square feet of gorgeous views of forest and sometimes whitetails and coyotes. Oh and the daughter's room? When she's home she closes it. Like Belinda, my gal pals do not share my window dressing tastes.

[Jim Matthews]

I installed horizontal blinds (no cords, single honeycomb) on our windows for heat management.

After putting them in, condensation no longer forms on the interior of our windows during heating season.
They performed so well, I put in vertical blinds over a couple key doorways.

This reduced the heat loss through our glass sunroom enough that the adjacent kitchen seating area is pleasant on cold mornings.
Installing the same vertical blinds over stairwell doors has made adding more baseboard zone controls redundant.

They're relatively inexpensive (less than the fuel costs saved) and make palpable improvements in the comfort of our house.

I like the translucent shades, in an off-white or cream color.
Other colors really show dust build up.

YMMV but I think honeycomb shades are a cost-efficient window covering that look sharp.