It’s no secret that in recent years the UK has experienced some of its hottest weather on record. This year we’ve already had one significant heat wave and there are likely to be more on the way in the coming months. 

This can present a challenge for UK homeowners because our properties aren’t generally designed to stay cool. In fact, many were constructed when keeping warm was a greater priority.

While large windows are wonderful for letting in the light, they also mean that our rooms can heat up considerably due to solar gain and higher temperatures, especially in the summer months. 

So, what is the solution to rooms that overheat largely due to having big windows? The answer is to invest in window shutters. 

In fact, if keeping a room cool is your main aim for fitting this kind of window treatment, then solid panel shutters are likely the way to go. 

As their name suggests, these are solid panels of wood that cover the entirety of your window and block out both light – and that means in the summer they are also highly effective at preventing overheating in your home.

What’s more, these kinds of shutters are available in a “half and half” or “tier on tier” style, which means the shutter itself is split for the top and bottom of the window. This allows you to open them to let some light in and in doing so better regulate your indoor temperature.

As an added bonus, solid panel shutters aren’t only excellent at preventing spaces from overheating in the summer. They are also effective at blocking draughts in the winter and at keeping heat in, which means they can make your property warmer when it counts too. 

Solid panel shutters are particularly well-suited to period properties where they complement the look and feel of older homes, so you don’t need to compromise on style to create a comfortable living environment for you and your family.

The British summer can be a mixed bag of stifling hot days and soggy wet ones, but whether it is sunny or drizzly, you’ll be able to enjoy more hours of sunlight as we approach the summer solstice. 

June 21st is nearly always the longest day of the year for the northern hemisphere, which is when the earth is tilted towards the sun the most, meaning Brits will see as much as 17 hours of daylight. 

In comparison, on the shortest day of the year (December 21st), there is less than eight hours of daylight. 

While the longer days during the summer months can mean enjoying the garden until late into the evening, going for runs after work, morning strolls at sunrise, and fitting more into your day, it can also be challenging for those who struggle to sleep unless it is pitch black. 

With the sun not setting until nearly 10pm and rising before 5am, some Brits may find it difficult to stay asleep if light seeps into their bedroom in the morning. 

That is why full-height and tier-on-tier shutters are better choices for bedrooms over cafe style ones, as they fill the entire window and don’t allow any outside light to enter the room. 

The slats that open and close give homeowners flexibility when it comes to light control, allowing them to let some natural light into the room without having to open the shutters completely. 

Tier-on-tier shutters even enable you to have the bottom ones closed and the top ones open, so you can enjoy the sunshine without compromising your privacy. 

For anyone who needs complete darkness to fall or stay asleep, solid wooden shutters could be the best option. 

These do not have any slats so they totally shut out the light and keep the bedroom a dark and cosy space for slumber and rest. 

In addition to this, they are great at keeping the room cool during the summer months, as they stop the hot air from outside from entering the house. 

They also prevent the sunshine from beaming into the bedroom, keeping it much cooler and more pleasant to sleep in.

There are many different kinds of shutters and, if you are keen to have some in your home, there is no reason why every window might have the same type or style.

You might vary your shutter choices for a range of reasons, including different window sizes, how much privacy you need, or aesthetic choices. However, one important consideration is just how much light you want to allow through a window.

Some, such as half-height or café-style shutters, allow a clear space higher up to allow light in, with adjustable louvers covering the lower space. Or you can have full-height shutters with louvers.

However, while these can vary the light levels, solid window shutters are what you need if you desire a complete blackout.

How Can Solid Wood Shutters Aid Summer Sleep?

A particularly good reason to have these is for your bedroom if you find it hard to sleep during the summer months, when it stays light late and gets light early.

It is an urban myth that you need less sleep in summer, even if you do get more vitamin D, so this is an issue you may need to address.

In particular, a children’s bedroom that faces west could receive too much light in the evening, with some kids unwilling to go to sleep while it is light, leaving them very tired the next day.

On the other hand, with the sun rising in the east, a room facing that way may see a lot of sunlight seeping through, causing an earlier-than-planned wake-up.

Another consideration in summer is how much heat you want coming in, as well as light. Closing the blinds, curtains or shutters can help to do this. By their very nature, blackout shutters offer a complete block, which may be handy in a heatwave.

Solid wood shutters are equally useful as insulators, too, helping keep the warmth in during winter.

However, the issue of light can be a concern throughout the year. As well as natural light in summer, you may have a bright street light outside or another source of illumination. But with solid wood shutters, you can block it all out, ensuring a much better night’s sleep.

If you have bay windows at your home, you may want to make them feel more private, or perhaps reduce the light streaming into your rooms if your home faces south. Window shutters can be a great option in either case. 

But what kind of shutters should you choose for your home? And should you opt for full-height shutters or cafe-style?

Let’s begin with which type of shutters you can install in bay windows. 

What type of shutters work in bay windows? 

The type of window shutters you choose for your Brighton home is largely down to personal preference, as any kind of shutter can work well in a bay window. They offer different aesthetics and options in terms of controlling the light that comes in. 

These are some of the most popular choices, but speak to our team to learn more:

• Solid panel shutters: as their name suggests, these are solid wooden panels that will block out all the light when closed. They are ideal if you are seeking greater privacy, noise insulation and if you want to make a strong design statement.

• Plantation shutters: these are shutters with adjustable slats (also known as louvres). This means you can easily control how much light enters your room without compromising on privacy. 

Noise reduction in towns and cities is becoming more of a focus now that the health impacts of excessive noise are being recognised more widely. Research has linked noise pollution to conditions including stroke, heart attack and high blood pressure. 

What height of shutters can you fit to bay windows?

You can choose shutters in different heights too. For instance, cafe-style shutters only cover half of your window, so are perfect for added privacy without blocking too much light. Meanwhile, full-height shutters cover the whole window. 

For the best of both worlds, you’ve got tier on tier shutters, which cover the whole window but which have separate bottom and top sections. This allows you to open just half of your shutter’s full height.

If you are considering adding window shutters to your home in Brighton, it is likely because you would like more privacy, especially if your property faces onto a busy street. While that’s completely understandable, it’s important to balance your need for privacy with your need for natural light. 

We all need natural light to feel at our best. Studies show that being exposed to natural light throughout the day improves our creativity, productivity and overall wellbeing. 

So, how can you satisfy your desire for more privacy without sacrificing the natural light that pours in through your windows? The answer is split shutters for windows in Brighton. 

Split shutters, which are also known as tier on tier shutters, are fitted as two independent sets of shutters per window. This means you can open the top shutters to let in light, while keeping the bottom shutters closed to give you privacy.

Essentially, these kinds of shutters give you all the benefits of full-height shutters and cafe-style shutters in one. 

But split shutters don’t just provide versatility in terms of allowing you to open both parts separately. They also allow you to tilt the slits at different angles, which gives you yet more control over what people can see through your windows as well as how much light you let into your room. 

As you can choose the finish and style of your shutters to suit your home, you can also rest assured that they’ll tie in with your interior aesthetic while improving your privacy.

In our experience, split shutters are most popular in ground-floor apartments or rooms, but they can be used in any location if you would like to have greater control over the light entering your rooms, as well as who can see what from outside. 

So, if you’d like to improve your home’s privacy without losing your natural light, split shutters could be the solution you’ve been searching for.

In the vast majority of cases, window shutters are the perfect addition to your home.

They help add privacy, improve the light entering the home on bright days and add kerb appeal to your home, particularly when installed on the front windows.

However, there is no perfect singular shutter choice but a plurality of shutter choices, and every option you choose will have implications for the room’s overall aesthetic.

With that in mind, here are some of the biggest considerations that come with choosing window shutters and how to know you made the right choice.

Permanence

Once you fit shutters, they are not exactly easy to remove, so if you want to install them, it is important to remember that any future installations will need to work with your shutters, as that is a fixture that is effectively permanent.

We will naturally help with any repairs or necessary fixes, but removing them entirely will be a complex process that might require patching or fixing other parts of your window frame.

They Need Professional Installation

Whilst not always easy, it is possible to install curtains or blinds yourself. Plantation shutters are not a DIY job by contrast.

They will typically need professional tools, careful project management and expert guidance in choosing the right blinds for the right room, all of which can add to the cost in certain circumstances.

On the plus side, having professional guidance means that you will get expert suggestions every step of the way.

They Need Space To Open

Whilst not all shutters need to open entirely, most do, which means that furniture and window dressings need to be placed in such a way that allows them to open freely.

One way around this, which we often recommend for taller windows, is to use tier-on-tier windows, which allow you to open either the top or bottom parts independently, allowing for the most light possible without anything getting in the way.

A standout feature of solid wood shutters is that they look both modern and traditional at the same time, able to complement a wide range of architectural and interior design styles through their functionality and beautiful craftsmanship.

One of the biggest reasons why this may be the case is due to the fact that whilst shutters are constantly evolving in terms of manufacturing, design and finish, the concept of louvred shutters is older than glass windows themselves.

The concept of louvred shutters is believed to originate in Ancient Greece, with the windows of houses being fitted with marble, fixed louvres.

This helped to provide ventilation, privacy, security from intruders and some protection from the elements, although it also helped that Ancient Greece was geographically located in a place where the weather was typically very warm and clement.

As the concept spread throughout the Mediterranean thanks in no small part to the conquest of Greece by the Roman Empire, the louvre concept started to take a more familiar shape, with fixed louvres made of marble replaced by movable wooden ones that would be refined and be exported to the Americas.

Part of this was due to the availability of materials, given that huge quantities of marble were not always available, but another aspect was that differing weather conditions necessitated varying amounts of light and heat in rooms.

In Northern Europe, particularly in Britain, panel shutters were more popular, because there was far more rain, wind and stormy conditions, necessitating a more drastic level of protection.

Whilst glass windows were seen as early as 100 AD in Alexandria, they were not common due to the difficult and wasteful production processes required, and when the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century AD, glass windows largely disappeared with them for centuries.

This made shutters the primary form of window covering and protection for centuries, only starting to change in the 17th century, which made shutters a beautiful addition rather than a necessity.

In an era of high energy bills in the UK, with little sign of them taking a meaningful dip any time soon, all of us want to find ways to reduce the amount we spend heating our homes in the colder months, or cooling them in the summer. 

With that in mind, window shutters for your home could be exactly what you need. In fact, shutters have been proven to improve the energy efficiency of our homes. 

As the British Blind and Shutter Association points out, the physics are very simple. 

In the winter, keep your shutters open on sunny days to allow the sun’s rays to warm your rooms. Then close your shutters as the sun goes down to retain as much of that heat within your home as possible. 

Simply reverse this process in the summer, keeping your shutters closed during the day to prevent your rooms from overheating due to too much sun exposure, and then open them at night to allow some of that warmth to escape and to increase the ventilation in your home. 

Window shutters also provide an additional layer of insulation, which means they can help you keep your home at a more consistent temperature. This again reduces the need for using your heating or air conditioning unnecessarily. 

The other great thing about window shutters is that it’s up to you whether you have them open or closed, allowing you to regulate the temperature in your home without relying on central heating or air conditioning. 

Other options for preventing too much solar gain include the likes of window films which, once attached, are always on your windows – come summer or winter. So, shutters offer greater flexibility in terms of how you save energy, as well as looking appealing. 

Depending on where you are in Brighton, you may also welcome the additional privacy window shutters offer too, allowing you to enjoy your home without feeling as though people can look in and see what you’re up to. 

Brighton is a place that’s famous for some very distinctive and unusual buildings, from the grand style of its Regency properties to the remarkable Pavilion. But most of its residential buildings still have windows that would seem to fit most styles of blinds and shutters.

However, there are instances when homes have unusual features and windows can come in various shapes and configurations. That doesn’t mean you can’t have blinds fitted, though; it is where our skill in offering bespoke solutions for any window will come to the fore.

Brighton certainly has some curious homes. This month, a townhouse sold with an unusual feature at its entrance – an old red phone box. If the new owner gets in touch and wants us to fit blinds in that, it really will be a bespoke job.

This home is not alone in being unusual. One only has to look at any set of listings of homes for sale to see the enormous variety of housing types. There are grand Regency Villas, large detached homes, semis, terraces, modern blocks of flats and bungalows, with their settings ranging from the densely populated inner city to the rural fringes by the South Downs.

In such circumstances, your windows may be large or small, your need for privacy will vary depending on whether your living room is on the ground floor or faces another upper-floor flat across the street, while some homes will have bay windows and others flat panes.

Because this is the reality not just of living in Brighton but providing shutters and blinds to its population, we have a wealth of experience in designing and crafting shutters that will suit every home, window and circumstance.

This means whatever your home is like, whether it is on the fifth floor or even if it has a red phone box incorporated into it, we can devise a great solution for you, providing a stylish and practical set of blinds that is made to measure for your home.

Because your windows represent such a significant part of any room at home, it’s essential that you take the time to decide upon the best way to dress them up. Without proper planning and forethought, you might end up making an expensive mistake!

Curtains and drapes have their place, of course, but you might find what you’re looking for in half height shutter blinds, a brilliantly versatile option that can be used to great effect throughout the house.

But where to put these shutters? Which rooms would they work well in?

When deciding on the best shutters for your home, it’s important to think about how you use the space. If you want to maintain a level of privacy but still allow lots of lovely natural light to flood the room, cafe-style shutters would be a great option to consider.

They look especially lovely in the kitchen, where you need natural light to help you cook but where you also want to keep the prying eyes of passersby at bay. In fact, any ground floor rooms that face the street would benefit from these types of shutters, including downstairs water closets, living rooms and dining rooms.

Shutters such as these give you the best of both worlds, with privacy provided at the lower half of the window, leaving the top half free and clear to bring in natural light. The added benefit is that because they’re half the height of regular shutters you can enjoy the look and feel of these window treatments while keeping costs down.

The resulting look with cafe shutters is very distinctive and unique, so if you’re keen for something a little different, they could well be the window dressing for you. If you’d like to find out more, get in touch with the Brighton Shutters team today.