Can You Pair Luxury Curtains With Solid Wooden Shutters?

Window dressing is so often seen as a binary choice; you either have solid wood shutters, blinds or curtains, with no room for a mix of materials and styles.

There can be some cases where a combination does not work; Venetian blinds and plantation shutters are somewhat redundant even if they could be practically fitted to the same window.

However, the belief that you have to choose between curtains or shutters is simply not the case, and there are a lot of reasons why you might want to have both, especially in bedrooms and in rooms with large windows.

Curtains, particularly thick luxury curtains, look fantastic as a frame for windows and if they are made from the right material and with a cut and style that suits the window, are a very effective way of blocking out light when they are closed.

The problem is that this is largely a binary choice; either the curtains are closed and block out all light, or they let in direct natural light, which can be uncomfortable on a particularly bright day and lead to the rather unusual tendency for some people to keep their curtains closed to avoid the glare of the sun.

This can be particularly frustrating for bedroom windows that face south or east, as the glare from the sun can be uncomfortable for someone who has just woken up

One solution is to have another set of curtains made of a thicker material that can be opened separately, but this can be unwieldy to use and make a window frame look disorganised.  

A more effective solution, therefore, is to use louvred shutters such as those found in plantation shutters to control the amount of light entering the room.

They could be set in the evening to be closed entirely or open to provide a comfortable level of light before the curtains are closed.