Do you open or close your curtains/blinds when you go out?

suki1964

The joys of living in the middle of a field, no prying eyes, no curtains until high summer when it don't get dark at night

pigpen

I never close the curtains.. saves having to open them again.. I don't even close bedroom curtains..

tanith

We close the blinds and curtains when it gets dark outside and open them again when we are up and about.

moneyistooshorttomention

The only time I close curtains in the daytime is when it's hot and I want to try and keep the house cool.

Well I used to - and then I moved elsewhere in the country and it's cooler here:( - so I've only been closing the curtains at night since moving here.

It feels like its much rarer to be able to look into other peoples windows here anyway - as quite a few of the houses have "office blinds" on them. Those blinds were one of the first things I ripped out when I bought the house (all the slats had had my scissors taken to them within days by me, whilst I waited for a handyman to remove the top "fixings"):). Personally - I've got modern style "nets" etc up at my windows - so that no-one can see in.

thriftwizard

One word of warning to those who never close curtains - my two older boys developed a sudden interest in astronomy when they were 13 & 14. It took me a couple of days to realise that their telescope was trained very low - in fact it was pointed at a neighbour's window, who had a very pretty 15 y.o. daughter... two boys were duly yelled at & deprived of telescope & pocket money, and my neighbour alerted as delicately as I possibly could! All perfectly natural at their age, of course, but still not acceptable. And I might never have twigged what they were up to, if I'd just assumed they were playing computer games or doing their homework.

When we go up to Town by coach, we pass by all those tower blocks with glass sides where you can gaze right into people's lives from the flyover. I always mutter about lack of privacy, but my girls laugh and tell me that there'd be no point having nice stuff/a 72" TV/the perfect urban lifestyle, if no-one could see it...

june89

The only window at the front is the kitchen, which we don't spend much time in - I'm not a "kitchen is the heart of the home" person. So there's no real indication of whether we're home or not. The blind is more likely to be closed because I haven't done last night's washing up (and I don't want my nosy neighbour to see that) than because we're out. :rotfl:

Back isn't overlooked so don't really need curtains for privacy but do draw them at night to block light.

dragonette

I've always v wen told that curtains closed during the day shows you are on holiday etc, so closing them before going out seems very odd to me. Round here, almost every home has net curtains to help with daytime visibility and privacy

maman

Interestingly, I was walking through a very 'gentrified' area the other day and noticed a lot of people had shutters at the windows rather than curtains and also frosting (probably a film) on the lower part of the sash windows. So they got the light when the shutters were open but no-one could see in.

catkins

So judging by the posts here my neighbours are definitely in the minority. I just find it so strange that so many houses have closed curtains or blinds during the day. I can't say I have ever seen it anywhere else I have lived.

Even my OH commented on it the other day when he walked the dog - a rainy day with no sun.

I walk for anything between half an hour to an hour so pass a lot of houses and I would say at least a third of them have closed curtains or blinds

NoGoodNamesLeft

We have privacy film on the lower part of a couple of our windows. I don't like keeping curtains or blinds closed during the day, but our next-door neighbours walk past our windows to get to their house and I like the extra privacy. Ours is just a frosted white butterfly pattern, but I quite fancy one of the more colourful stained-glass effect versions.

We do shut the curtains at night, but I'm not sure why we bother since we live in a tiny rural villge with not much light coming in. I suppose it helps to keep the heat in.