How to Pair Pull Down Shades, Shutters, and More with Interior Decor
If you’re having trouble finding the perfect window treatment that matches the interior of your home, here are a few tips to help. When it comes to pull down shades, shutters, curtains, or any window treatment, consistency is key in good interior design, and mixing and matching different styles of drapery in one room shouldn’t be done without good reason.
Let’s get started.
An Overview of Blinds
Blinds are common and budget-friendly and are the easiest to match with any interior design. However, they often lack character as their materials — either plastic or wood — doesn’t lend much to unique appearances or variation in style.
Blinds can be mounted inside the window frame to create a clean look or outside to make a small window seem larger. For blinds: Opt for a clean white, or if your room’s dominant color is a neutral shade, try to match it.
An Overview of Pull Down Shades
Shades are the fabric window coverings that are pulled down, fold down, or roll up. They’re a continuous sheet of fabric that offers decent light control and style variation. There are many different types of shades to choose from, including pull down shades, honeycomb shades, roller shades, and Roman shades.
They are slightly more expensive than blinds and offer more variation in opacity, privacy, design, and more.
If you’re looking for solid shades, a neutral color is popular, or you can match them to the room you’re installing them in. If you’re using patterned shades, try to match one of the colors in the print to the room’s accent color.
An Overview of Drapes
Drapes, or otherwise known as curtains, hang on the sides of your windows from a rod mounted above them. They range in price, from cheaper than blinds, to more expensive than shutters in some cases, and offer diversity in material, style, opacity, length, colors, patterns, and more. They can even be custom-made to match your taste, window, and room.
If you want your window to blend in, a neutral color will help or match it to the room. If you want to highlight a window, think of a color or design that catches the attention of any passerby, like a contrasting shade to your room’s dominant color.
An Overview of Shutters
The most expensive item on this list, shutters are a work of art. They’re meant to add total light control, privacy, energy efficiency, and style to any interior room. Usually made of wood, shutters are fairly easy to match with most room decor, though they will always stand out as a staple of the room.
Design Tip 1: Stick to a Color Palette
Having a definitive color palette is essential for tying a room together. Many interiors have 2 or 3 different color tones in them, with one accent color that stands out among the rest. A common design mistake is mismatching the window treatments to this color palette. Only mismatch them if you want to highlight the window, but be careful to not overdo it. Nothing looks more out of place than a red window treatment in a sea of greens and browns.
You can use a variety of fabrics as long as the colors match up.
Design Tip 2: Mix and Match Different Styles
A good way to add depth or character to a room is mixing and matching different styles of window treatments. That doesn’t mean throwing two different color drapes on a window — it means adding a valance over shutters, or drapes to accent shades.
Creating a layered look can give the room an accent piece without taking up too much space while adding even more light control and privacy.
If your windows are smaller, mixing and matching styles can make the window look drowned in fabric. Save this tip for the larger windows in the house for the desired effect.
Design Tip 3: Keep Your Fabric Weight Consistent
If you decide to mix-and-match window treatments, make sure the weight of your window treatments is similar! This will make it look consistent. Think of this: one part of the window looks burdened or sagging with the weight. You can mix and match styles, but the key is to pick one fabric type to make everything look consistent.
Design Tip 4: If All Else Fails, Go Neutral
You cannot go wrong with a neutral color palette for your window treatments. Neutrals such as beige, ivory, taupe, black, gray, and shades of white appear to be without color, but in many applications these hues often have undertones. For example, beige might have an undertone of pink, tan, or gold.
Every window treatment, from pull-down shades to shutters, has neutral options. You won’t be locked into a style at all if you go this route. And many of them offer neutral patterns as well, so you won’t be stuck with solid-colored drapes throughout your home.
If you do this, consider choosing one uniformed color for blinds. You have more freedom for shutters, shades, and drapes, which you can easily match per room, but the most common thing to do is have matching blinds throughout your home.
Design Tip 5: Consider Hiring a Consultant
If you’re having trouble visualizing how your window treatments will look inside your home,
contact a Style Consultant from Budget Blinds Tempe. They will be able to point you in the right direction, show you the right styles, colors, and quality of window treatments that are in your price range.
Your local Budget Blinds® Style Consultant will bring samples and design ideas right into your home so you can shop where your windows are. Call 866-921-1880 today to schedule a free in-home consultation.
