Do I want shutters or wooden blinds?

[theduchessstill]

I love the look of both but shutters are more than twice the price for the one quote I've had so far.

I'm kind of leaning towards the shutters but I've never actually been in a house with them - just admired them from the outside! My concern is that they may look 'boxy' from the inside and that they may cut out a lot of light even when the louvres are open. My sitting room is never going to be light and airy anyway - it's a lovely room but only gets the sun first thing.

My other concern is that my window is not bay and I think that a lot of them that I have seen and admired, from the outside and in pictures, are in bays. Do they work in ordinary windows? Also they're not floor length and I can't visualise how they would sit on the sill...

Finally I have been quoted £300 for blinds and £800 for hardwood blinds. That's for a 175 by 120 cm window. Does anyone know if that sounds reasonable?

Tia

We have just been through this dilemma on our new build house & decided to go with shutters throughout. The blinds that we liked (perfect fit) ended up being a similar price & in some cases more expensive than shutters, which was a surprise! I had the same concern re light, but having them in white means the light is going to be reflected in & the shutters we are getting are half & half, which means we can have the top half open & bottom half closed, but there is no obvious line to show the 2 halves. Very clever! We have a 4 bed house with a study, a massive bay window & window in a very difficult to get to place in the hallway. It is costing us £6400 in total. Only rooms we are not doing are the bathrooms! Can't wait until they are fitted!

I went with white wood Venetian blinds with tapes as we need to replace the windows in the next couple of years. My blinds were from blinds2go and were about £160 in total for a bay window.

We've always had shutters throughout the house and I will do again in the house I'm moving into, but even in white they do block out an awful lot of light. I always keep them fully open during the day (well except when getting dressed etc) as I'd rather have less privacy than a dark room!

We have shutters. We went for the 76mm louvre with hidden tilt rods. Ours have a mid rail which means we can operate the top and bottom of them separately. They look great and don't block out light at all. In fact, the rooms feel lighter! They're great and I love being able to adjust them according to where the sun is throughout the day.

Just put up wooden blinds - in the end I bought from Argos saving £200 off the bespoke price trimmed with a file (it cost £5) and refinished with leftover wood oil from the deck

I'd have blinds every time.

I used to have shutters, and they made the room very dark (even when open), and the fact that we always had bars over the window made me feel like I was in a cage.

We have shutters in every room and they don't make our rooms dark. I think they look great and they are so much easier to clean than venetian blinds. They were expensive but well worth it for me.