Practical Considerations When Choosing Window Blinds and Dressings

With the great versatility that window blinds and dressings offer, there are a number of questions one has to answer before making a purchase decision. The choice of window dressings can be influenced by many factors, including insulation, energy savings, and room lighting. After style is concerned, there are many practical benefits from choosing the right window treatment.

Insulating For Sound

For homes near highways or next to noisy neighbors, the right choice of blinds can dramatically reduce the amount of sound that enters the house. Cell shades utilize a unique cellular design that traps sound. They come in single cell and double cell varieties with the larger number of cells offering more noise reduction. Cell window dressings are top-down blinds that are made of fabric and come in a variety of colors and styles. Other good choices for insulating shades include fabric and Roman style dressings.

Energy Conservation With Window Blinds

The windows of a home are responsible for up to 50% of the heat and cooling losses during the year. Energy efficient window dressings are an effective and inexpensive way to save energy while improving a home's décor. In order to hold heat in the home during the winter, insulating shades are the best and will perform double duty for sound reduction. To keep heat out during the summer, reflective blinds are recommended.

Most of the summer heat gain in a home comes from the sun's rays; getting into any car that is parked outside in the summer is proof of that fact. Reflective blind materials will keep that heat out of the home to reduce the load on air conditioning units. Honeycomb cell shades, wood shade, and faux wood window blinds offer the best reflective properties. They will work most efficiently if the surface facing the window is painted with a reflective color such as a bright white.

Blackout shades can perform a similar role, in addition to reducing the effect of UV solar radiation on fabrics and wood.

Lighting A Room

Obviously, window dressings play a large part on how much light enters a room. However, there are more options than just opening or closing a blind.

Window treatments come with many different levels of light filtration. Blackout shades, as their name suggests, are excellent for keeping out all light from a room, which can be a life saver for light sleepers. Blackout liners can also be added to decorative treatments. Sheer shades can be used to adjust the amount of light that enters a room from none when completely closed to tilted open to allow filtered light in. Fabric and honeycomb shades are made with different degrees of light filtration as well. Special light filters can also just block UV rays, but still illuminate a room.

Choosing the right window dressings has more considerations than just style and taste. While window treatments offer a multitude of design choices to match any style, they also can provide many practical benefits to improve a home.