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.

Sleep deprivation or poor quality sleep can impact both our physical and mental health. Approximately a third of people in the UK have difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep, with severe impacts on their daily lives. 

How Does Light Impact Sleep?

One of the issues affecting sleep loss is light pollution through windows. Street lamps, security lighting, traffic and emergency services all contribute to light pollution at night in Brighton. 

Exposure to light affects our circadian rhythm, the body’s timing system that tells us when to wake and when to sleep. When artificial lighting is used at night our body thinks it needs to stay awake. 

Experts recommend enjoying natural light every day and reducing light exposure at night. Late-night screen use and bright artificial lighting can induce restlessness and we find we can’t get to sleep.

How Can Blackout Shutters Help You Sleep At Night?

With one in five of us simply not getting enough time with our heads on the pillow, blackout shutters can help optimise your sleeping environment.

Light pollution can leak around curtains and ill-fitting blinds, disturbing your sleep. Blackout shutters are an effective way to reduce light entering your bedroom. 

High-quality shutters are made to measure and installed to minimise any external light. Solid window shutters can block out light entirely.

If you prefer the visual appeal of a plantation shutter, a honeycomb blackout blind can be integrated into the frame. This allows you to regulate external light. 

What Other Reasons Are There For Installing Blackout Shutters?

A  Weekend Lie-In

When mornings become lighter in the summer, we can find ourselves wide awake far earlier than we want to be, especially on weekends. 

A blackout blind or shutters can allow you to have the lazy morning you deserve.

Night Shifts

People working night shifts have to contend with daylight and the additional noise of the world outside keeping them awake. Blackout shutters can help to reduce noise as well as light. 

Reducing Glare On Screens

A bonus of a blackout shutter is that when you’re not sleeping, it eliminates glare on screens for TV, gaming and laptop use. They’re perfect for home cinemas too. 

If you’re feeling sleep deprived, blackout shutters are a great option for getting the shut-eye you need.

Full height shutters are among the options you might consider. It is worth taking into account their specific qualities and attributes and then deciding whether these fit your desires better than any other.

Among the pros of full height shutters are:

•       Lots of flexibility over how much light comes in, as they can cover the window fully to keep all the light out, while allowing you to control how much comes in through operating each panel on its own.
•       They can be tailored to fit any window shape
•       They improve security, not least by making it harder to see what is inside a room from the outside

The cons include:

•       Full height shutters are not usually ideal for non-recessed windows
•       Place more strain on hinges than tier-on-tier shutters
•       Can be more complex to design

What Are The Best Alternatives To Full-Height Shutters?

As well as tier-on-tier shutters, cafe shutters can sometimes be a good alternative.

Overall, however, full height shutters are, by definition, very well suited to tall windows. The key difference between these and half-height or café-style shutters is that they cover the whole window, whereas café-style shutters only cover the lower half.

This may be particularly pertinent if you have very tall windows, as, for example, Regency buildings in Brighton and Hove tend to do.

If you like some light flowing in freely to your home, especially in the summer months when the sun is higher in the sky, cafe-style shutters are better. But if you want to be able to shut everything out and maintain security while maximising insulation, go for the full height option.

There are several different kinds of shutters you can choose from:

•       Full height shutters
•       Half height shutters
•       Café-style shutters
•       Solid panel shutters

Each of these has different attributes, which means that some windows will be better suited to one style than another. This is worth considering if you are interested in having full height window shutters fitted.

Full height shutters are versatile and can be used in different window styles, but they are best used in large windows, as this is where the fact that they cover the full space becomes more useful.

This is because if you have a large window, being able to cover it fully is necessary to protect your privacy, while at the same time being able to pull the shutters up means you can get a very clear panoramic view not afforded by small windows with a narrow field of vision.

Such large windows might be bay windows, particularly tall windows, or French doors.

Why Do Full Height Shutters Suit Regency Buildings?

There are many different homes in and around Brighton that might benefit from full height shutters, from modern semis to traditional Regency properties.

In the latter case, tall sash windows were a key feature of the architectural style, especially from 1790 to 1830. It was a means of expressing affluence that was no longer subject to the 17th-century window tax that allegedly spawned the term ‘daylight robbery’.

Not everyone who lives in Regency buildings today is rich, but if you have a window like this, you are certainly blessed with lots of daylight that you wouldn’t want to be robbed of. With full-height window shutters, it will be all yours to enjoy, or to shut out as and when you wish.

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.

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.

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.

One question that is sometimes asked about shutters, particularly solid wood or louvred designs, is whether they can help keep a home more secure.

Security shutters absolutely exist, both in the familiar metal rolling shutter form commonly used to secure places of business and even in the form of specially designed plantation shutters made from composite materials and featuring advanced locking systems.

If you want to buy graded and rated plantation shutters, they do exist. However, even conventional wooden shutters can provide some passive security, even if they are not necessarily a rated security system.

The most powerful weapon in a home security system is psychology, and shutters provide a sense of privacy and security that disincentivises an opportunistic burglar.

Most burglaries are smash-and-grab affairs that take less than ten minutes from entry to exit, often with significant research, scouting and casing to ensure that the burglary is worth the risk.

Anything that could potentially delay a burglar or suggest that a homeowner is at least mildly conscientious about their home security could make committing the crime not worth the risk.

As the Metropolitan Police put it, burglars will only target homes they think will contain valuables, and if they cannot see any obvious signs of anything, they will move away.

Beyond this, blinds and shutters can act as a frustrating physical barrier, particularly if there is a latch or lock on the inside that needs to be forced open manually.

Whilst a set of shutters is no substitute for secure window and door locks, they can provide enough of a disincentive to make a home less of a target.

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.

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.