Shutters, blinds and shades provide a wonderful variety of options for shutting out light, while giving a unique decorative touch to the room. A shutter is a window or door covering which has a frame and operates on hinges to close up the opening. Within the frame are often operating louvers used to control the amount of light and/or air coming in. A blind is normally a set of narrow wooden, metal or plastic slats attached together by cloth or nylon cord and hung from the top of an opening. Shades are similar to blinds, but instead of slats, they consist of fabric.
The following describe a few of these options:
Simple shutters: Rectangle of wide frame boards hinged to the window frame. The interior of the rectangle may be filled with a solid wood panel, shirred (i.e. gathered) fabric or even wooden blinds.
Louvered shutters: Rectangular frame holding slats at an angle. These slats may be movable or fixed, vertical or horizontal.
Full shutters: Shutters which cover the entire opening. If it is in a door frame, it can be called a "French door."
Half shutters: Louvered shutters covering the bottom half of a window opening, for example, a cafe shutter.Wide blade shutters: The movable louvers in the frame are larger than the 1" slats normally used in louvered shutters or French doors. These are also known as "Plantation shutters."
Venetian blinds: Wooden, plastic, or metal slats held together by cloth tape or nylon cord and drawn up by a cord affixed to the bottom slat. The slats can be set simultaneously at particular angles by a series of cords and pulleys to limit the amount of light permitted in, while still allowing the breeze to enter the room. These blinds are called such because they were popular in Venice in the 1600’s. Mini blinds use thin plastic or metal slats less than 1" wide.Vertical blinds: Slats hanging vertically from a mechanism at the top of the opening which allows the slats to open or close by adjusting their angle. Stencil designs or wallpaper can be used to make this window covering blend in with the surrounding walls.
Woven blinds: Narrow rods of bamboo, aluminum, or wood woven together with yarn to create a shade which reduces glare but permits ventilation. It can be operated by a spring roller (see roller shade), by a roll up process from the bottom, or like a Roman shade.
Roller shades: Fabric attached to roll around a rod at the top of the opening which has been spring loaded to facilitate easy opening and closing.
Roman shades: Fabric which, when pulled by a string, pleats together upward to the top of the opening. A pleated shade is similar, but the pleats are narrower and permanently creased.
Austrian shades: Rows of lightweight fabric which fall into deep scallops. Cords or tape set between the scallops are used to draw the shade up or down. Variations of this are the balloon shade and the cloud shade.
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