Buying the Best Window Shutters for Your Home

Designing a home is a unique and wonderful experience for any person to have. There is any number of things to consider when putting all the pieces together. One of the last things to add is the window shutters. This solid window covering has vertical stiles and horizontal rails and is a perfect way to accent your windows. There are many types you can add to your home to make it more beautiful and several things to consider.

A window shutter is a movable over or screen for a window or door. The shutters can be mounted within the house or outside the house depending on the type of you are matching in to on the interior and the exterior. Before beginning any project, the type of shutters need to be determined as well as if you want the entire house down the same way.

When you are planning to add shutters to your home you must consider the style or theme of your house such as matching all the windows in your house, or just matching the ones on the bottom story or the top stories of your home. You must also think about the types of materials in connection with your home, such as using aluminum shutter to cover rooms exposed to high heat. You will also want to consider the function of your room and the windows in such as if it is a kitchen, will it need to be opened frequently or is airflow a need to the living room. Different blinds have different purposes. Do you need more light or less light?

Shutter types:

When it comes to different types of shutters there are several to choose from and you should select you shutters on how you want your house to look, but also on how you want to break up the light for any one room or whether you need to protect against a storm. The list of the below shutters is a place to start.

Interior shutters are narrow unites that are hinged like an accordion so that the two units overlap when the widow opening is closed. The interior shutters are fixed and generally do not rotate beyond raising or flattening a panel. These can be made of plastic, wood, or fabric and can be made to fit the entirety of the window or just a portion as desired.

Exterior shutters were designed to control the elements keeping out light, rain, and wind as well as providing privacy. These generally hinge on each side of a window either on the top or on the sides. They can be mounted on tracts and be made to slide open and closed on tracks for greater degrees of control. These can be non-functional and mounted to enhance the designs of the house though in certain areas of the country, they can be an asset such as an exterior hurricane or storm shutter meant to protect the home during inclement weather.

When it comes to the types of shutters that can be installed in a house; there are typically nine different shutter styles to pick from that can be mounted in the home our outside of it. Though these can be custom designed to fit particular shapes of windows or for specific types of purposes.

Exterior Louvered Window Shutters

Exterior louvered window shutters can be considered classic and traditional for their clean lines and their ability to enhance a variety of different homes. They can be both operable, meaning they can be used for blocking sun, wind and rain as well as providing privacy and they can be decorative, meaning they make the house look nice, but they have no real function. This type of shutter is a horizontal slat the runs along the length of a shutter that is placed closely together on hinges that allow for easy adjustment for privacy and light control. This style of window shutter works well in almost any home you want to put it in.

Raised Panel Shutter

A raised panel shutter is panel or series of panels that feature a raised solid base, like on a door, hat can be tilted upwards or downwards as desired to control light and air flow. Raised panel shutters are generally seen in colonial, saltbox-style, Georgian, Federal, Victorian, Cape Cod, Ranch, French Country, and Greek revival.  This type of shutter is similar to doors or kitchen cabinets with single or double raised panels. They do not generally stand out and blend well with almost any style of home.

Board and Batten exterior shutters

Board and Batten exterior shutters are easy to put up take down and assemble on your own. It is a design found commonly on colonials, farm houses and cottages. It doesn’t take very many boards to build this unique element blocking shutter and the design is very noticeably unique in appearance.

Shaker Style Shutters

Shaker style shutters are very similar in appearance to bard and batten shutters. They have the same sort of simplicity as the board and batten, but they looked more polished. They generally have a boarder and are built where the pieces are more uniform.

Plantation Style Shutters

Plantation style shutters are a more laid back Southern style of shutter. They can be closed against storms or left open for the warm summer breeze to enter. Plantation shutters are a wide type of Louver shutter. They generally are constructed of vinyl, a composite and wood.

Café Style Interior Shutters

Café Style interior shutters are basically louver style shutters, but like the French café they are named after. This style of shutter covers just the lower half of the window and gives the room they are in a degree of privacy and class. The slats of these shutters can be rotated at the hinges to let more light into a room. This type of shutter is perfect for street facing rooms where you may want a bit of privacy.

Cut-Out Shutters

Cut-Out Shutters are just that. They are basic shutter with a design cut out of the center. This pattern can be anything you choose to add a certain degree of class to your home and shutters. This pattern can be almost anything that can be added to a shutter such as a flower or a clover.

Scandinavian Style Shutters

A Scandinavian style shutter is the board and battens design, but dressed up with cut-outs and bring colors. These shutters are elegant combination style shutters that make your home stand out during the color days and stay bright and airy in the warm days.

When it comes to the type of materials that they can be made from there are numerous choices. The type of material you use for your windows not only needs to compliment your home, but also the window it will be accenting. There are different materials and color schemes that can set of any window of your choosing.

Wood Shutters

Wood shutters are the traditional way of directing light into your home or blocking out the elements. Each type of wood has a purpose and will make your home beautiful in its own way.

Basswood Shutters

Basswood Shutters are one of the more popular choices for wood shutters. Basswood is a slow growth tree which means less sap. It is a straighter wood, which cracks less and has closed grain. This makes it easy to apply stains and primers. The wood is also lighter in weight which means the shutters made from this material can be hung easily with less weight being placed on the hinges.

Poplar Wood Shutters

Poplar Wood Shutters are an excellent choice for some shutters because they are hard to crack or warp and any staples used in their product will not come out because the wood is very durable with a tight grain. This is a good wood for taking paint.

Alder Wood Shutters

Alder Wood Shutters is being made from alder wood which is a hardwood that is also light. It is a clear grain or knotty grain pattern which makes it easy to stain or paint.

Maple Wood Shutters

Maple Wood Shutters is terrific to work with for wood workers. It is a stable and strong wood which is good for winder larger shutter panel and when stained they come out looking amazing.

Pine Wood Shutters

Pine Wood shutters include inexpensive and soft wood. It is not the best choice for the shutters unless you want to go for a more rustic look. If the wood is stained it will give it more of a rustic look. Paint is not recommended for this type of woods as it is too soft can will be easily dented and scratched; though if you can get heart pin for your shutters you will have better luck working with it and painting it. This is not easy as it one of the most expensive woods to buy because it can only be found in trees over 300 years old.

Cherry Wood Shutters

Cherry Wood Shutters are beautiful. They have that distinctive color and smooth grain to match and its natural lighter pigmentation darkens with age and light exposure to warm shades. It is perfect for adding a fish for extra gloss. It is a bit more of rare wood because of availability which makes these shutters more costly.

Oak Wood Shutters

Oak Wood Shutters give your home a more classical look. This wood has a large course grain which makes staining easy and presents a beautiful finished product. There are two type of oak that can be sued: white oak and red oak. Both take a stain well and when made into shutters, they come out looking beautiful.

Faux Wood Shutters

Faux Wood shutters are an option when picking out materials for making your home look beautiful. Faux is a French word meaning false or imitation. Faux wood is man-made wood constructed of solid polyurethane synthetic materials that have the characteristics of real wood. Using faux wood to make your shutters can be a benefit to your budget as well as to you home as a whole. Using a synthetic material such as faux wood provides means that it is more durable and long lasting than wood and will not rot or need additional treatments to keep it from deteriorating over time. That means it is more maintenance free than real wood. It is also more energy efficient than wood because the way it is manufactured leaves no room for the reduced qualities of wood. There are three different types of faux wood shutters to pick from and each has its own benefits if you incorporate them into your home. These three are solid synthetic shutters; solid poly shutters and ply faux wood shutters.

Composite Shutters

Another type of material shutters can be made of is known as composite shutters. Composite shitters are made from medium density fiberboard. This is made from fiber residuals that have been broken down and combined with wax and a binder made of resin. This is all done under high temperatures and pressure. The resulting material is strong and it is also extremely energy efficient. If you add a polypropylene film to it, it will make a perfect finish and best of all; this is very cost effective way of getting quality shutters.

There are two types of composite shutters to mention for their reliability and long term effectiveness and those are hybrid shutters and medium density fiberboard shutters. The last main type of materials that can be used to make shutters is vinyl. Vinyl shutters are made from hollow plastic or polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The shutters are formed through a process that uses molds that press the materials together. The resulting components are then cut out and snapped together to make the shutter. This is a very efficient process which leads to very energy efficient shutters as well as ones that never need to be painted and are easily repaired. PVC shutters are a very durable and energy efficient shutter. They can be limited on colors by they are very easy to make through the process of plastic hollowing. They are difficult to paint, so whatever dyes are mixed into the molds are the colors that are available, but they are resistant to scratches and are energy efficient.