HELP BEFORE i have a meltdown - patio doors

[nailpolish]

we have patio doors in living room. i LOVE them - in the summer they are wide open and you can sit at them and the tree is in view and its a very pretty tree.

trouble is, i want to put blinds on them, they are south facing and so the sun streams in - you need blinds

currently (we havent long moved in) there are venetian blinds. they are very old and grotty - they are ideal tho as you can draw them right back

but i dont like venetian blinds. they remind me of offices and workplaces iyswim. i bought material from ikea and made panel curtains - they are very nice if i say so myself but they cut out a lot of light and i cant see my pretty tree so well!

so anyway WHAT DO YOU HAVE

thanks

bump

We used to have vertical blinds but the kids messed around with them so we took them down.
They can work quite well though as you can have them turned to let more light in but tbh they did remind me of what some banks have.

but what are the alternatives? im not having vertical blinds

next door have horizontal blinds - but they dont use the patio doors at all - never open them. so the blinds stay down

also horizontal blinds get too dusty

argh

in my first post i put venetian - i meant vertical

its so confusing this blind thing

Voile curtains?

An awning?

Like some shops have. My brother uses his all the time.

do you mean on the outside?

Yep, like a big canopy, that you can raise and lower as you wish. Not cheap though.

We've got the same problem.
We ended up buying floor length voile tab top curtains from Ikea for the summer. We used to put a patio umbrella just outside the door when our dd was small so the doors could be kept open. Now we've got 2 sails that attach to the wall outside to create shade.
In the winter I take the voile down and stick up curtains.