to think there is nothing wrong with net curtains?

[Pipbin]

I'm watching 'Selling Houses' and people looked and one house and said 'oh no, net curtains. Look the whole street has nets'.
Now I know that there are some nets that are a bit old fashioned but are they such a sin?

Nets make me feel itchy

I loathe nets and voiles. Old fashioned.

We are in a bungalow, and the DDs both have bedrooms with windows at the front. We have white wooden venetian blinds, which are really nice, and look clean and modern from the outside as well. They tilt them to block nosy passers-by while still letting the light in.

We have wooden venetian blinds too, I don't like them, think they're very 80s/90s and make the room dark, I'm planning on replacing them with nice airy nets like in the photos above.

I have a modern flat, the room I use as an office has one wall that is mostly floor to ceiling window. That window has (clean white completely plain) voile covering it. The flats with similar windows where you can see peoples mess inside lower the tone of the neighbourhood.

I'm not aware of any functional equivalent to this type of curtain, although I would have thought it should be possible to design mesh roller blinds that would have the same effect of allowing you to see out without letting people see in. However such blinds would be more complex to install and far more difficult to clean than my curtains. For my windows there would have to be three, mounted on the windows, which would be fussier/uglier than using voile.

My voile is certainly far more attractive to look at than vertical blinds, which some people here have used.

In my bedroom I have a Velux window that is split into a vertical lower section and an upper section that is in the sloping roof. I have blackout blinds in the window frames to use at night. For privacy during the day I have voile suspended from two curtain poles, one pole is above the upper window and the second is where the two windows meet, so the voile hangs at 45 degrees (or whatever the slope of the roof is) between the two poles and then vertically to cover the lower window. It gives the bedroom a romantic effect. (This wasn't my idea, I inherited the concept from the previous owner.)

Once a week?

I've washed my voiles twice in 12 years!

Are the plantation blinds really expensive?

But surely people don't wash their nets weekly.

Obviously I am very slatternly because coincidentally I washed our 4-5 year old voiles for either the first or second time just this weekend, because I noticed they were very dusty, but surely a normal frequency is every few months or so?

I have nets, blinds are a no go for me.

Cross post Viva. Glad we are on the same page .

You may be comforted to hear about the house we sold to a single man in 1976 when I was two years old, leaving the net curtains behind.

DM still lives near there and she then went on Curtain Watch for the next few decades. It was at least Thirty Five Years before the curtains were washed. They were were grey and the house was practically falling down. I think the rotten windows had to be replaced and the old curtains may well have been, well, curtains.

Viva our shutters were about £1k for about 9ft of bay window so not cheap but they'll last forever.

We are in a standard bay fronted semi.
We have wooden blinds in the living room that we inherited. In our bedroom we have voiles but they are John Lewis voiles so that must count for something.

www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-the-basics-plain-slot-top-voile-panel-white/p125378
Cheap as chips too.

My new neighbours hate nets. They took them down when they moved in a few weeks ago and now we just look directly into each other's bedrooms

I have now bought nets...

I hate them with passion!
Ugly and old fashioned.

If you want to be a nosey fucker though they're amazing .

1k sounds reasonable. Thanks.

Yes but AWimbaWay they are lovely Victorian lace, not net curtain off the roll, a huge difference.

I used to love when my mum washed the nets as she would let me play at being a bride! I loved my net curtain veil.

1k sounds reasonable. Thanks.

But who's got just one window? We have fifteen! Or do you have different window-dressings in different windows?

I'm with awimba. I have quite a few nets curtained windows pinned on pinterest. They can look pretty. Don't work if you're a modernist type though

Awimba those look great and suit the scheme and style of house.

If I put net curtain ups I think I would be told to take them down -we live on one of these new build developments where you are not allowed to paint your door a different colour.

Lovely

Just the front windows gave shutters fideline, the back and side ones have different dressings.

Of course Not

Wouldn't work here as both reception and kitchen run full length of house front-to-back and I'd need both ends of room to match, so the shutters would creep through the house like an infestation