disguising aluminium/timber window frames..

[treacletart]

Hopefully buying a house soon. It has, amongst many other dated features, those old style aluminium and dark timber combo double glazed windows that make my teeth itch. Can't afford to replace them, but feel if the dark timber were painted they would look much better. Has anyone ever done this? Would white just blend in with the silver or would they look weird?

If the windows are prone to condensation - as are my old Aluminium windows are, do not paint the wooden bits...if you do the water that collects on the window will cause the paint to peel - looking not much better than you had before investing time & money in paint. Just ignore them...after 4 years we are just about to replace the windows with new thermally broken Aluminium windows with trickle vents, that fit properly, so no ugly wooden bits - hopefully condensation will the a thing of the past.

we've had to put nice wooden blinds on all our windows so we don't have to look at the aluminium and also can't afford to replace- do like the blinds though

cheers. Absolutely agree blinds are the way to go inside - It was the exterior I was wondering about really ..

I'd ask a good decorator but my instinct would be to paint the outside frames in an off white colour (matt/eggshell finish) and get similar colour wooden venetian blinds for every window.