Window Blinds

[WVH1977]

I just finished having my house built and looking for some window blinds. Any recommendations? Are the cheaper aluminum blinds good enough or is this something I need to put little more money/effort into? Never really though about blinds until now.

Thanks

 

[MAD777]

I'm in Northern NH and installed double cell cellular shades. Blackout for bedrooms and middle of the road light filtering for other areas. I'm very happy with the insulation properties in winter and with the solar blocking in summer. Being retired, I close the shades on the sunny side during summer, following the sun over the course of the day.
My house in South Florida had expensive wooded blinds in the living areas & master bedroom. The guest bedrooms had cheap aluminum blinds. The wooden ones looked brand new after 15 years, but the aluminum ones looked beat up before a year was out.

 

[oosik]

We were going to have wooden blinds. Looking into this type - quite a bit of annual maintenance. We went with curtains. Once a year - throw them in the washer/dryer - your finished.

The wooden blinds will show differential sun bleaching and require that the exposed cords be replaced every so often. Our curtains have a layer of white material exposed to the sun. This layer will prevent bleaching of the actual curtain. The curtains hang on simple cloth loops over a 2" diameter curtain rod. No mechanisms to go bad.

 

[oosik]

Choose the right product and you can add considerable insulating value. Windows do represent one of the greatest heating loss in any house.

 

[Peter 315]

I just let the wife pick out the ones SHE wants, Its not worth my time she will win in the end anyways.....

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I just let the wife pick out the ones SHE wants, Its not worth my time she will win in the end anyways.....

Ditto. We have these on our living room window, although it's not a full length. They're easy to use and they look fine.

Vertical Blinds | Window Blinds | American Blinds

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Duplicate.

 

[TnAndy]

We've gone to vertical ones....the horizontal are such dust collectors.

 

[/pine]

I passed a window treatment service truck...it had a bumper sticker that said "blind man driving"...!

 

[ovrszd]

We are view people. Not a single curtain or blind in the entire house. :thumbsup:

 

[2LaneCruzer]

We are view people. Not a single curtain or blind in the entire house. :thumbsup:

We pretty much are too, but like to have the blinds at night and when we're gone.

 

[CobyRupert]

I love the Roman blinds (or roman shades?).
They’re blinds you can either pull up/down the bottom, or pull up/down the top.
Pulling down the top is the best feature as you can still have privacy (from the neck down, or however you set them) and still let sunlight in through the top.

Edit: They may not be called “Roman”, or Roman is one particular style of them. They seem to be called “top down bottom up” shades....be careful googling that!

 

[Muhammad]

I invested in a dual shade for my master bedroom which had a translucent shade and a blackout shade, both operate cordless. It wasn't cheap though, about $400 for one 72x48 window.

Cheap blinds at home depot are about $30-$70 per window if you want basic blinds.

You can also do curtains if you want.

 

[dmccarty]

I'm in Northern NH and installed double cell cellular shades. Blackout for bedrooms and middle of the road light filtering for other areas. I'm very happy with the insulation properties in winter and with the solar blocking in summer. Being retired, I close the shades on the sunny side during summer, following the sun over the course of the day....

For years, we had no blinds since there is no one around to peep in the house and we liked the view. Eventually, we put up some double cell shades in some windows and they really keep the house more comfortable. They were NOT cheap that is for sure, and because of the expense, we did not put them up in all of the windows. I wish we had put them up in all of the windows.

Later,
Dan

 

[Industrial Toys]

This house also used to have zero window coveringsfor decades and huge windows. But no one around to look in either.

Lots of blinds now including those horizontal insulated blinds (cellular shades?) that help with heat loss on large windows. Home Depot always has returns, probably for wrong size, that they send to Habitat and I realized I could cut them on a mitre saw. Buy them for like 5 or 10 bucks cdn, brand new in the package!

 

[ovrszd]

We pretty much are too, but like to have the blinds at night and when we're gone.

I will admit I don't sleep as well during Full Moon.

 

[cdaigle430]

I replaced all my windows with triple pane gas filled ones 4 years back. We also decided to replace all the old vertical and bamboo blinds. We needed ones that were cat proof, easy to clean, had some r Value, decorative, customize able, fire resistant, and had blackout capability because I was doing the night shift at the time. We wanted different colors, texture and shapes for each room as well as the ability to easily swap the blades out when we got tired of them or they got damaged. One other consideration was for some windows we wanted them installed inside the window sill and others outside. if you install outside you wont get blackout as much.

We chose vertical Bali and Hampton blinds from Home Depot-Bali was customize-able and cut to order in store. Best interior update I ever did!

 

[TnAndy]

I passed a window treatment service truck...it had a bumper sticker that said "blind man driving"...!

Passed a guy today in shiny new truck, big paint job on the door said "The Blind Installer". I thought "it's great he isn't letting his handicap slow him up"

 

[ovrszd]

These jokes about signs reminds me of a Seinfeld episode where the Proctologist's car license plate was shown "A**man". Kramer had a lot of fun with that one!!!

 

[ovrszd]

A little drift here, our new house and shop have "Low E" windows. I'm very impressed. Almost no radiant heat from sunshine in the buildings.