With most window coverings, it’s all or nothing. When the treatment is fabric you can adjust the amount of light that enters by drawing the cord to slide the pleats across the rod. This rod can go past the window so you have what we call stack backspace. This fabric gives you a soft treatment where a window blind is called a hard treatment. But with horizontal and vertical window blinds you can tilt the slats to let in the desired amount of light you want at the time of day you choose to change the light filter, or you can totally darken the room with the window blinds by turning the wand or cord to close the blind. Motorization is becoming very popular today and it can be added to your television remote in your theatre room or living room or master bedroom. You can pull the blinds up to the top of the head-rail and stack them to the top of the window this gives you a full view to the outside and if it is a vertical blind now in many choices of fabrics or in the traditional style this can stack back to the left and right of the window. With window blinds that are mounted inside the window, our windows can look kind of barren unless they have beautiful trim moldings around the frame so the best look for these horizontal blinds is a soft fabric drape that can go on a poll or on a traverse rod. The fabric will soften the window and can give your room a more complete look as the drape goes to the floor and you will have more balance with the furniture pieces in the room. Try to opt for made to measure blinds and chose the name brands, if possible, especially for inside mount. Even at custom prices most blinds are very affordable, especially for standard rectangular windows. High quality wood window blinds are at the high end of the price range and yet less than half the cost of a custom wood shutter. Lets talk about warranties: some vendors offer limited lifetime warranties, others promise to repair or replace the defective blind, for as long as you own them, but there will be freight charges of about $45.00 to take care of UPS costs and this a very important point I want to make is that the window blinds have numbers on them that go to the original owner, if you are a not the owner of the house that they were installed in, the warranty is null and void. If you need repair parts write to Hunter Douglas or Bali or Levolor and they can supply you with brackets or new string but it will be hard for you to restring a blind. One very new feature is a wood blind that has a delight feature this is so you will not have light come thru the holes in the slat because there are no holes and the string is wrapped around the slat it is a great new feature for a master bedroom. There is no getting around the small amount of light that will come thru the sides as the blind is cut shorter than the width of the window on a inside mount installation. Also brackets on an inside mount can be ceiling or side mount; there are also hold down brackets for installation on doors so that they don’t hit the door at the bottom when the door opens and closes. When you go to choose the blind remember it comes in different size slats this is so when they are tilted open you can have a small space or a larger space between the slats to look outside. Blinds are a simple and easy way to control light and keep the cost down till one can afford fabric draperies. Wood blinds are preferred over the metal blinds as the metal leave the design impression for being dated.

Juli Johnson ©DEH Interiors