YOUR HOME YOUR WAY n THE BRANDON SUN n APRIL 2026
8
Finding the right blinds for your windows BY WENDY KING
Versatile, stylish and functional, blinds and shades deliver value and beauty to your home decor. (Adobe - Katarzyna Bialasiewicz) Q uality blinds and shades can let you control the amount of light in your room, offer privacy, bring
starting with controlling the light with your choice of materials. The opacity of the material is an indicator of how much light will come through. Blinds can be composed of a variety of materials or fabrics, including vinyl, polyester and even wood. “Decorative fabrics have a variety of opacity. We have fabrics that have a per- centage of opacity. We also have decora- tive fabric that provides room darkening,” Maslaniec says. If you choose room darkening or a one per cent opacity, that will block out a lot of the sun to help control the temperature of your room. ~ Melanie Maslaniec, Creative Consultant at Interior Images
“You don’t technically have ‘blackout’ because you can sometimes still see light on the sides. But you cannot see through the fabric itself when it’s a room darken- ing fabric.” The degree of light control will vary with decorative fabrics. Light can also be controlled with the style of the blind. “Take a top-down, bottom-up shade, for instance. You can pull it down to re- veal the open window, or you can have a sheer portion there. You can let in a little bit of light, and then when you want it blacked out, you can lift it up,” she says. “And then there are banded or the dual shades, where you get bands of fabric that interplay with each other. You can do that in a blackout as well, and then re- veal as much light as you want.” Some blinds offer insulating value. Cell shades are made of two layers of fabric with a pad of air in a honeycomb or cell. The trapped air is what insulates. Continued on page 10
colour and pattern to your room, and with some styles, even improve the R val- ue of your windows. With so many options, it might be a bit of a challenge to make a decision. Melanie Maslaniec, a creative consul- tant at Interior Images (interior-images. ca) says consulting with a professional can help. “We do like to make sure we get the right product and then from there we work on the de- sign,” Maslaniec says. “We help guide clients through the process. We will ask what their needs are, wheth- er they’re looking for a blind or some drapery, and what kind of light control they like and then we start drilling it down from there.” Blinds and shades (which are two names for the same thing) can fulfil different functions,
Powered by FlippingBook