Window covering are one of those things that are so often times an after thought in a room’s design but can make or break the over-all design. This is especially true in modern design where sophisticated, minimalism is the calling card of a good design. Do something to detailed and it can look out of place, do to little and the space looks unfinished and your neighbors get a new uncensored reality show. The challenge lies in striking a balance between the functional elements of a good window treatment while maintaining the design integrity of the space.   Certainly there are some beautiful fabrics on the market today that can lend themselves to the sleek and sophisticated feel of modern design.  In our case we wanted something that would block out most of the sunlight yet not totally impede our view of our surroundings. This meant that heavy curtains were out of the question, and light weight sheer materials were probably not all that practical. On top of that we didn’t want something that was visually detracting to the lines of our windows, after the extensive search we put in to find just the right windows to give us that floor to ceiling storefront look. Narrowing down our design wants and functional needs we decided that in our case commercial-style roller blinds were the best option for our main living spaces. They rolled up and out of the main sight lines of the widows, stowed away in a tightly compact cylinder at the top of the window frames. Additionally we were able to get a color match for the frames so they would draw even less attention to the covering. But maybe the best feature was the micro-weave which allowed us to still see out the windows while they blocked 80% of the sunlight and obscured almost completely anyone from seeing in.  Once we had agreed on what we wanted and needed, Stacy did the majority of research on where we could get quality roller blinds. Obviously there were some local big box retailers who carried custom options that would work but we ended up finding an online resource (selectblinds.com.) that offered a really high quality blind, at about 1/3 of the cost of the other retailers. We order some color swatch samples a few weeks back, made our selections and placed our order. The new blinds arrived today and although I haven’t put them up yet, it they certainly look like they’re well made with easy to install pieces. I was pleased that not only did the material match the color of our window frames but the additional hardware was painted to match the blinds, a nice little detail. 

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Design, Products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.