I love shutters, both examples

Had to make a quick trip to Home Depot so I checked out their shutters. They are have the wider bar at top and bottom, so I guess that just the way they are. I dont want to block any more light than I have to, but Im sure its one of those things you get used to before long.

Maire, love your fabric. Thanks.

Ours are like that as well - both full window and half:

(Someone should press that chair's slipcover)

Wow, rubyclaire, I cant see the shutters because I am blinded by your gorgeous tables.

Thanks for posting the pictures.

Ded, I put shutters in a front bedroom for all the reasons you listed. Mine look similar to Ruby's. I love them. So easy to tilt in either direction, so easy to completely close up for the night. I had them custom made, and made the vanes as large as possible - and there is no center vertical bar, somehow the vanes in the top and bottom sections are connected in the frame.

Prior to that had 2" blinds. They blocked more light during the day than the 3" (maybe 4"?) shutters do. Super easy to clean too, no strings in the way - 10 seconds with a swiffer. 😆

I am a fan. Will be adding them to more rooms...

I would match whatever you have downstairs, but personally I think the wider louvers adds to the heavier look as much as the frame. I think the smaller louvers are a lighter look although right now they are not popular.

Mine look like rubyclaire’s second picture. They’re probably 30 yesrs old and have 2.5 inch louvers. I like them.

I am again probably the odd one out. I prefer mini blinds.

Is your bedroom in the front of the house? Do you want to math whatever windows are beneath them?

Have you thought about blinds? There are so many different options in window treatments that it can be over whelming. In the front of the house we used something like Levolor, I don't know what brand since all the window treatments were made to order by our local upholsterer. The ones facing the street are light filtering sheers and we seldom lower them. I like that you can still see out the window but it's difficult for someone to see inside, even with lights on. Something like these:

https://www.blindster.com/shades/sheer-shades/2-inch-deluxe-light-filtering-sheer-shades?c=Ivory

In our bedroom, family room and kitchen we have woven blinds and paid a small fortune to have them top down and/or bottom up. Turns out we only lower the bottoms in our bedroom at night. Every now and then we'll lower the bottoms in the family room to block the sunlight in the summer but pull them back up when the sun moves overhead.

The last 2 photos are the family room and the narrow windows in the back of the house never get direct sun so they're always up like this. We were concerned about living in a house with naked windows and made all of these choices so that the windows would be finished before we moved in. I really like all the materials we picked - shutters, blinds and drapery panels. Not a single Roman shade this time around, although the blinds have their own self valance.

And I desperately need to repot my monster plant - just waiting for DD to help, and to get a bigger pot and a better support.

My old house had shutters throughout and all of them had that heavy top and bottom. However, all of the shutters covered the window completely so the heavy portions seemed to blend a bit into the narrow window trim. (Please excuse the dirty windows.)

Functionally the shutters were nice. Easy to open and close, easy to have partially closed when I wanted a little light. However, I felt like they always blocked a lot of the view so you never really had a fully open window. (That might work well for a bedroom or bathroom.)

Thanks, Maire Cate. I have considered some of those things. All my front downstairs windows have shutters. One of my bedroom windows faces front, and two guest room windows face front. The guest room windows have semi sheers with a bamboo roman type blind for night. I cant get into being all matchy-matchy for now. If the upstairs window dont match, and it drives me crazy, Ill fix that later.

One of the things I though of was the semi sheer blinds like you have. I like that look. Unfortunately one of my problems is that the inside frame of the window is not very deep. The shutter guy said he would have to hang them on tne outside of the frame which would allow light through on the sides.

I think top down bottom up cellular blinds were my only other option. I believe they come with a room darkening feature.

i really need privacy . My neighbors houses are close and we have lots of dog walkers.

Sherry, I used to have mini blinds everywhere. They were metal. My cat loved them because she could push them open with her paw. She also loved playing with the plastic end of the pull cord.

I like the look of the shutters! We have 1” mini blinds but some of them are old and barely raise up anymore. I bought JCPenney basswood blinds in all sorts of window widths to fit our windows after I moved here when we got married. The challenge is our windows are old so we need 1” vs. the more popular 2” which seems to be mostly available now. I kept extra slats in case of breakage by kitties. But JCP doesn’t seem to carry these anymore. I will probably need to go custom. Now that school is out I can at least look into having someone come out.

I was thinking about the comment about light showing though the edges of the blinds so I checked mine and took a photo. We also have drapery panels that cover the edges of the blinds so that effectively blocks the light seepage.

I pulled the panel away so you could see the light that comes in. Ours are only light filtering and are inside mount.

Thanks, Maire Cate. Thats one of the problems Im trying to solve. The shutters I have downstairs are inside a frame that blocks light leakage on the side. I wish my windows were deep enough to set the shutters inside. I am asking a lot from whatever window treatment I get, most likely shutters.

Downstairs from the side looks like this.

I have the same problem with a shallow depth to fit any kind of blind or shutter. 75-yr-old house. We moved in 20 years ago and it's time to update window treatments. We get a lot of sun so want to be able to block that but also we enjoy being able to look out without have to raise a solid shade. @dedtired, your last photo is very enlightening in terms of how they mounted your shutters I would need the same here so thanks for showing that.