Blinds or curtains - which do you prefer?

JodyBPM

I really dislike vertical blinds. They just look really officey to me. I think simple fabric blinds or wooden venetian can look nice, and can look much neater in smaller rooms than curtains, especially when you can inset them. I don't like nets, and am not keen on curtains outside of bedrooms.

I'm quite bamboozled by the trend for verticals tbh. I can't believe anyone actually thinks they look nice! But each to their own!

patriick

I live in a 3rd floor flat and have another flat at right angles to mine. Vertical blinds give me the opportunity to look straight out and down whilst blocking anyone from the flat to the side looking in.

I think if you get the vertical blinds in a decent fabric they don't look too bad, and you don't have to constantly clean them.

Venetian blinds, especially wood ones, do look nice tho.

Waterlily24

I'm not keen on nets, vertical or horizontal blinds so we just have cutains and roller blinds (kitchen and bathrooms). We are lucky because we are not overlooked and have shrubs and trees hiding the front of the bungalow from the road. We had vertical blinds in a kitchen about 35 years ago.

Norma_Desmond

We've got dark wood venetian blinds in all our windows; I think they give a lovely 'colonial' feel to the house as it's really old - and they match the wooden sash windows which would look a bit 'chintzy' for my taste if they were dressed with curtains.

shegar

evoke wrote: »

I disagree. There's something called 'washing' that keeps nets clean and white. LOL.

Also, they stop people peering into your property during the day - something that's difficult to achieve with blinds.

Nets will come back into fashion, mark my word! Blinds are just a passing fad for people to make their homes look like offices.

Points taken, you probaly keep your nets chrystal white and ironed nicely ,:) but a lot of folk never take them down to wash from new and beings they are with their nets 24/7 they dont see them turning dirty and off white, also alot folks never open their windows when there are cooking so all the horrible cooking smells linger in the nets........:eek::eek:LOL

People cant peer through blinds that easily because you can slant them either way or mine open up in the middle to draw back if you want........
But its personal choice how we dress our windows and what we feel happy with.......

KateLiana27

Ok, so it seems like the consensus is that wooden venetian blinds are the best choice for blinds, and not many people share my liking for vertical blinds I think what has put me off venetian blinds in the past is that they seem to break easily and I can never work them properly - but I suspect that's more related to their being rubbish quality (and me being incompetent). I'll give them another try!

shegar

KateLiana27 wrote: »

Ok, so it seems like the consensus is that wooden venetian blinds are the best choice for blinds, and not many people share my liking for vertical blinds I think what has put me off venetian blinds in the past is that they seem to break easily and I can never work them properly - but I suspect that's more related to their being rubbish quality (and me being incompetent). I'll give them another try!

Yes your right, they use to be metal but now all the parts are plastic, I use to have venetian blinds in a bungalow with large windows but they didnt last long cos they were quite large and when you pulled the blind up it be too heavy for the plastic parts and break....

ally18

I have plastic horizontal blinds in my front room and they have started to sag in the middle right at the bottom so they don't appear to close fully now. I hate them because they are so difficult to clean. I'm thinking of going back to nets basically because I can't afford the better quality blinds.

Ben84

I find net curtains make the house much darker and block out the outside more than I like. I'm very fortunate to have nice views from all of my windows, a tree lined avenue and across the road a park from the front and trees/gardens from the back windows. I know that having no net curtains means people can see inside the house a bit, but I don't find it matters that much really, I just like being able to see outside properly and the house feels brighter and bigger without net curtains. We have slat blinds I can lower on very sunny days to deflect the heat a bit and fabric curtains I draw overnight when it's cold outside.

beedeedee

Back in May we started to redecorate our lounge/diner - and we're still doing it bit by bit!
We always had both curtains and vertical blinds (which we made and fitted ourselves and never looked quite even at the bottom), so we decided to get new curtains and replace the blinds with professional ones as and when the decorating was about done. We took the curtains down before we started but left the blinds and straightaway what a difference to the room! I know it was spring/summer - but we haven't had to have lights or lamps in the mornings or till quite late at night. All of us love it and we are seriously thinking about not having curtains in there ever again!