Vertical blinds took the decorating scene by storm back in the late 70’s and all thru the 80’s. People rushed to take down their ceiling to floor, wall to wall drapes and replaced them with vertical window blinds that went inside the window frame.

The reason for this mass exodus from drapes to vertical is in no small part due to the awesome advantages of verticals. People could now open their house up and still have privacy. Before with draperies it was open up for all to see in or shut up so no one could see in or out including the sun. They liked the fact that vertical blinds were easy to clean. When little ones in the house leave a dirty finger print on a vertical slat-no problem-a wet cloth and it’s gone. With drapes this is almost impossible.

The one big advantage that caused such a stir was the fact that verticals do not collect dust. Due to their vertical slats dust will not settle. This was a big change from the Venetian blinds that people were used to dusting almost constantly.

Versatility of placement is an advantage of vertical window blinds. They can be mounted either inside the window frame or outside, they can draw to the center or close to the center and they can be mounted one way to the right or to the left.

There are some disadvantages to vertical blinds that you should take into consideration. Verticals by themselves are rather ordinary except for the some verticals which have no trouble commanding a visitor’s attention.

The companies that manufacture vertical have tried to come up with different styles of valances to gain attention but so far there is nothing to make the vertical stand up and shout look at me.

To look its Sunday best verticals need to be surrounded by a cornice or decorative valance and a good looking set of side panel drapes.

In high winds the vanes go flying around and are not easy to control unless you use a tie back or a piece of Velcro to secure them. They used to put chains at the bottom to try and control them but that proved to be a disaster as well as an eye sore.

On the other hand if you own a rental unit, have a high traffic door way with a very busy family or just want good looking low maintenance window treatments, verticals are your window treatment of choice because they are easily maintained and have a low replacement cost.

As in every thing in life verticals have past there prime and are settling down to a very comfortable middle age. With middle age there still comes a lot of excitement but you also get a good sprinkling of wisdom. In other words, the verticals on the market today are good looking, have proved themselves for wear ability and color retention, and would stand proud and do justice to your windows and doorways.

 

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 14th, 2007 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.