4 Ways To Use Shutters In Your Home

By Author: Paula Morris-Dungan
Total Articles: 5
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Shutters can be an attractive and useful addition to the interior or exterior of your home. They come in a variety of materials, designs and colors to complement any décor. Wood shutters are by far the most popular and they give you the option to be able to paint them different colors as your design style and color choices change over time.

1. Exterior Window Treatments
For the exterior windows of your home, shutter designs can be found to enhance the appearance of almost any style architecture. They give a polished look to the windows, and if installed traditionally with hinges and locks, they can be opened or closed to protect the window glass during storms. Therefore, they are not only attractive; they also provide added breakage resistance for those expensive windows.

2. Interior Window Treatments
Wooden shutters have long been a frequently used interior window treatment. They can be custom made to fit any shape or size window. The look that you get when using shutters rather than other types of window treatments is clean and streamlined. They provide complete privacy while still allowing light ...
... to enter through the louver. They can be painted in complimentary or contrasting colors according to your design sense. If you prefer more light, shutters can be half size the height of the window, which allows privacy, but also lots of light.

3. Interior Design
Wood shutters can also be used in other ways in your interior décor. They can be used as room dividers or screens when the panels are attached together. They can be configured to do the same job as wooden louver folding doors. (They are actually just about the same thing.)

Distressed or antique wooden shutters can be used as unique and unusual wall art either indoors or on an enclosed deck or porch. They can also be used as doors for cabinets, closets or other furniture pieces. When used indoors they project a tropical island, beach or breezy southern style that is casual and eye catching.

4. Complementary Window Treatments
Shutters can be used in conjunction with other window treatments, depending on their style and size. Half shutters work well with a valance. If you do not care for the stark plainness of shutters only, sheers, curtains and drapes from any discount fabric store can still be used to cover them as desired.

Unless you have odd shaped windows that require custom shutter installation, they are very quick and easy to install yourself. Any beginning DIYer can handle it. A drill, a screwdriver and a measuring tape are pretty much all it takes.

The next time you are considering window treatments, check out some of the great shutter products there are to choose from. They can be far less expensive than custom draperies, and nothing beats that clean uncluttered look that shutters give a room.Paula Morris-Dungan attended Art Institute of Pittsburg for Residential Space Planning and Interior Design. She spends her spare time remodeling and designing the interior of her 80+ year old house. She is a full-time freelance writer who writes for blogs and a discount fabric store about various topics including paint, furniture, upholstery and outdoor fabric (including Duralee fabrics and Robert Allen fabrics), and interior design in general. For more details visit http://www.fabriccarolina.com/Outdoor-Fabric.php and http://www.fabriccarolina.com/Robert-Allen-@Home-Home-Fabric-Fabrics.php