A question we are asked regularly is ‘do shutters block out light?’. The simple answer is that plantation shutters can allow as much natural light into a room as you want. Whether you want to reduce the amount of light filtering in on bright, sunny days to keep your room cooler and limit sun damage to your furniture, or you want to allow as much warming light in as possible to illuminate a darker feeling room, wooden window shutters will allow you to do so. Here are a few things to consider when weighing up your desired light requirements.
How to minimise and maximise light with plantation shutters
With a wealth of shutter styles to choose from and a few clever adjustments, you will be able to see as much or as little sunlight as you would like.
When closed, full height shutters make excellent light blockers, making them a popular bedroom choice. Slats can run the full height of the panel or you can choose to have a mid-rail added. The mid-rail allows you to open the upper and lower slats separately to provide light control.
The twin panels on tier-on-tier shutters work like stable doors where you can throw open the top tier and enjoy lots of light flooding the room and close the bottom tier when you want to retain some privacy on the bottom. Alternatively, you can have both panels completely open or closed as required.
Many customers think that solid shutters offer all or nothing when it comes to light, but this is not the case. We can either create fully solid shutters or a mixture of solid panel with louvres on the other half to add some versatility. Where privacy is a must, café style shutters can be used on the lower portion of a window only, allowing for unobstructed light to beam through the upper portion of a window.
Consider Louvre size
The only place light is allowed into the room with plantation shutters is in between each louvre. Our louvres come in a variety of sizes from 47mm up to 114mm. Picking the correct louvre size for your shutters can really help change the look and feel of each shutter as well as provide you with further control over light exposure. Adjusting Louvres will maintain a balance between natural light and protection. The image below provides some indication of the different sizes available for each of our ranges and shows the amount of light each size louvre will let in when open.
Control light levels with tilt rods
Tilt rods are fitted so you can open and close your shutters easily. They allow you to adjust your louvres to control how much light you have filtering into your space and perfect your preferred light levels. You can even have a tilt rod system that independently control of the top and bottom sections of the shutter.
Blackout shutters
Larger louvres rather than small louvres will help to obstruct maximum light when closed. Larger Louvres mean few slats and less light gaps. However, if it is optimum room darkening you are after, we can supply shutters with integrated blinds which act as a secondary layer between your shutters and windows for the best room darkening achievable through a window dressing. The blind can be pulled down when the shutters are open and remain in place while the louvres are either closed or opened. A seamless operation.
Don’t forget, when you need all the light you can get, all our plantation shutters are built with hinges that can be opened fully, allowing for a completely unobstructed window when preferred (we can even hide the hinges if you a striving for a sleek, modern interior look. All our blinds can be customized to fit any window including bespoke-shaped windows.
When you see the light, and decide on shutters for your window dressing, give us a call!
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