Named for their ability to provide privacy for people relaxing with a hot drink, cafe-style shutters are perfectly suited to people sitting down next to a window, as they provide privacy without inadvertently creating a dank atmosphere.

They are perfectly suited for back rooms, dining areas, conservatories and airy lounges, but there are some considerations that should be made before you get in touch with expert installers for a perfectly bespoke finish.

How Wide Are Your Windows?

If you have particularly wide windows, cafe-style shutters are not quite as sturdy as a fully framed shutter would be, simply because the shutter’s frame is only connected to the bottom of the window frame rather than both the bottom and top.

Bespoke designs will often work around this to ensure that they are as secure and aesthetically pleasing as possible, but in some cases, the better option is to opt for a fully-framed shutter with wide louvres to ensure as much light can enter the room as possible.

Is Insulation A Problem With Your Home?

Wooden shutters are remarkably effective at providing an extra layer of draught-proofing and insulation, particularly in combination with other methods of reducing heat loss around your windows.

However, the only effective shutters for this purpose cover the entire window frame, and since cafe-style shutters only cover half of the windows, chilly winds can enter your home as normal.

Do You Need Complete Privacy?

Cafe-style shutters are ideal for living rooms and rooms facing the garden, as you do not need perfect privacy. Bedrooms, on the other hand, often benefit from blocking out light completely, and a cafe-style shutter system will lead to light entering the room above the shutter.

Café style shutters are defined by their half-and-half design, which covers the lower half of the window but not the top. This enables lots of light into the room while maintaining privacy lower down, so anyone close to the window is not exposed to anyone peering through it.

This design makes it obvious why the term café style arose, for this was exactly what they were designed to do in European cafés.

Indeed, while window shutters of various kinds have been around for centuries in the UK, café style shutters are newer.

Will Café Style Shutters Suit Your Home?

You may see plenty of cafes that do have these shutters, but what are the pros and cons of having them in your home instead?

Pros include:

• Lots of natural light
• A traditional style
• Easy to maintain

The cons include:

• Less light control
• Not as insulating as full-height shutters
• The privacy at low level does not extend to higher windows

The last of these factors may be the most important consideration. In a café, these shutters are designed to stop people on the street outside having their noses pressed against the window, not those who have a distant view across the street.

In a home, the situation may be similar or different. For example, if you live in a terraced home and the window faces straight out onto the street, it could bring the same privacy benefit, especially if there is no building with an upper floor vantage point across the street.

However, if there is a higher floor, this may not make it an ideal choice, although it might depend on what the room is used for.

Apart from all this, if you are a café owner, there should be no doubt that these are definitely just the thing for your premises.

Unfortunately for some, it means that daytime working is not always an option. Evening and night shifts are needed to ensure essential services keep running. 

According to Office for National Statistics figures, up to 8.7 million people work nights or evenings in the UK, with approximately 3 million people regularly on night shifts. 

How do night shifts affect sleep patterns?

Rising with nightfall and going to bed with the sunrise can play havoc with healthy sleep patterns. The impact of night working even has a name: shift work sleep disorder. It occurs when the natural circadian rhythm, or sleep pattern, is disrupted by non-traditional hours.

Disrupted circadian rhythms can cause problems with falling asleep, staying asleep and feeling sleepy when you don’t want to. Fatigue, headaches, mood swings and issues with concentration can also be symptoms. 

How can you prevent sleep problems when working night shifts?

There are several ways to manage sleep problems due to night shifts. Of course, the best way would be to choose shifts that allow an ample recovery break between blocks of night shifts, but that is not always within your control. 

Here are a few ways to improve your daytime sleeping:

Bedroom environment

Possibly the most beneficial is to ensure you have a bedroom that is quiet, cool and dark enough to enable quality sleep. 

Solid shutters and blackout shutters on the window provide a cooler, darker environment by blocking out sunshine. They can also add some soundproofing from external noise.  

Bedtime rituals

Routines for bedtime can help get your mind and body prepared for sleep, whether you are going to bed at 10 pm or 7 am. It can include herbal tea, reducing screen time, or a warm bath or shower before getting under the duvet.

Avoid sunlight before you sleep

If you have to travel home after the sun has risen, sunlight can make you more wakeful. Wearing sunglasses on the journey can help reduce its effect.

Do not disturb

Where possible, turn off notifications and ask family members not to disturb your sleep. Turn off the doorbell or notify delivery drivers not to deliver between certain times.

It can be very easy to make choices about shutters based on the current weather. In a hot and sunny summer that has broken records, your focus might have been on ways they can keep you cool and deal with bright light when the sun is high in the sky.

These are important issues, but it is also worth considering other seasonal matters:

• Will your shutters also prevent you from being dazzled by low sun in late autumn and winter?

• Can your shutters provide insulation when the weather is cold?
• How well do your shutters help with non-seasonal requirements such as increasing privacy?

To give an example of the variation in requirements you will face, in midsummer, the noon-day sun above Brighton rises to nearly 63 degrees above the horizon, with a day of 16 and a half hours.

In midwinter, the sun is less than 16 degrees up at noon and the day is under eight hours long.

Why Are Full Height Shutters So Versatile?

Full height shutters can be ideal for all times of year, because they cover the entire window. This means if the window faces south and you want to avoid being dazzled by it, this can work throughout the year.

If they are made from an insulating material like wood, they can also be great for maintaining the temperature, especially in winter when they can keep the heat in.

Wood is a great natural insulator because of its cellular structure that includes a myriad of air-filled cavities. As air does not conduct heat very well, it will not pass through wood easily.

Other shutters can offer similar insulation benefits (especially if made of wood), but half-height shutters are better for windows that don’t face towards the sun at a height where the glare can come in through the uncovered part of the window.

When choosing shutters, be sure to choose them for their year-round qualities.

This is perhaps understandable, given that louvred shutters are believed to trace back to Ancient Greece where hot summers and heatwaves would have likely been relatively common.

Here are three ways plantation shutters keep homes cool during hot summer days and heatwaves.

Plantation Shutters Are A Solid Barrier

An adjustable louvre shutter system is much thicker than curtains, blinds and other soft window dressings.

This means that it is much harder for ultraviolet rays to penetrate into the home and generate heat, as it cannot easily pass through the shutter the same way it can pass through a window. 

This effect is maximised if your windows have a UV-resistant coating.

Plantation Shutters Reflect Heat Away

Added to this is that most plantation shutters are painted white or a particularly light shade, which improves their ability to reflect light away from the room.

Whilst white shutters are typically the result of tradition rather than necessarily practicality, they do provide an additional benefit in the same way a white roof does.

You can even adjust the reflective properties by tilting the louvres; whilst keeping them completely shut will bounce UV rays away, pointing them at an angle can also reflect them upwards and away or towards the upper part of your room if you want greater control of the heat in your room.

Plantation Shutters Create A Thermal Barrier

What makes plantation shutters unlike other forms of blinds or shutters is that they form a solid barrier between your window and the rest of your room, and when closed entirely, create a barrier that hot air struggles to penetrate.

It works in the same way double glazing works, stopping air movement and thus breaking the convection cycle.

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.

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.

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.