Do your Drapes Need a Refresh? Here’s What’s Trending…
BWS Design • Dec 03, 2018

There is no better way to spruce up a room than changing the window treatments, especially the drapes. With so many eye-catching ideas, everyone will think you totally redecorated, especially if you move the furniture around. Look around your room for a new color or pattern idea.

It’s All About Light-Weight Layering

Going into the New Year, living rooms and bedrooms are being adorned with multi-colored layering. It is two, three and even four colors being layered together. Beautiful fringes, chords, and tassels are used to design dramatic scallops and angles to make every home unique.

Living Rooms that Entertain

Many people still enjoy having an elegant room for entertaining their guests. You can dress up your room with dramatic draperies.

  • If your living room is painted in a white, beige or light color, deep colored drapes mixed with lightweight, sheer inserts is always a beautiful way to be bold, but allow light to come into a room. Using multi-colored panels can also be a way of pulling in different colors you want to highlight from your furnishings. It doesn’t have to be totally symmetrical with dramatic swoops and angles.
  • If you have furniture that is mono-colored, you can pick up that color with your drapes and select a light-weighted and patterned insert. Dramatic toppers can add a bold look
  • If you want the hardware part of the decor, there are beautiful bronze, gold, and wood rods, and ends that can a dramatic look. Adding elegant, chorded ropes and tassels of gold or bronze can make a rich look.

Family Room Where Everyone Hangs Out

  • A lot of homes have grown accustomed to a white family room with built-in shelves and hearths. The walls and furniture are neutral tones. If you have a few throw pillows with a bright color, that would color the room and break up the neutral tones. Again, layering heavier-colored, outside panels with lighter sheers in the middle is a great way to allow a softer light into an already bright-white room.
  • If your family room has the warmth of woods, lighter toned curtains would be best. Depending on your furniture, you can use light-colored patterns. If you have heavy, dark furniture, large stripes that run horizontally with soft-toned colors is a classic look.

Kitchen Windows Are for Gazing

Most people don’t like closing off their kitchen windows, especially when the windows are over the sink. It’s always relaxing to look out when we’re doing the dishes. Some people have beautiful bay windows that welcome in the morning light. Depending on how your kitchen faces the rising and setting sun, you may want to be able to dim some of that sunlight.

  • For homes without the glare of the morning or afternoon sunlight, shear-type curtains are perfect in the kitchen.
  • For kitchens that are soaked with the morning sun, sun-blocking materials are available. You can even use the cafe curtain idea with a bit of flair using a bold color panel on the outside of two sheer panels. You may like the bold color as the top panel.
  • For a bay window dressed with plantation shutters, four solid or patterned panels placed at the outside and inside frames are all you need to accent your kitchen’s decor.
  • For smaller windows, window blinds that you can pull all the way up are also a great idea for the kitchen, especially for those kitchens with blinding sunlight. There are plenty of different ideas and types of blinds that offer a pretty print or light colors to allow sunlight to filter through into the room. The cafe-style curtains are always great to add just a bit of decor in your kitchen. The cafe curtain comes in many different looks, so it doesn’t have to look outdated.

Bedrooms – Fancy or Plain

Many master bedrooms, especially those with a lanai and pool, have large slider doors. Along with blinds or shutters for privacy, drapes and curtains make a bedroom cozy and play a big part of the decor.

  • For those big sliders, many people have a sliding blind of some type for privacy and to keep out the morning sun for those days when you actually get to sleep in. Again, layering would give you a way to add a couple of colors for a simple or dramatic look. There are many cornice board designs to hide the top of your sliders for a crisp and clean look. A simple and bold look is using those curtains with the big loops hanging on a beautiful rod.
  • The smaller bedroom windows where you use a panel design on the sliders can be dressed with just a single color taken from the sliders.
  • If your bedroom only has a couple of windows, you can make them appear bigger with cornice boards, long panels with sheer lace covering the window panes.

Just Blinds Can Help You Create A Refreshing New Look

With over 30 years of experience in the Central Alabama area, our creative team at Just Blinds, Inc. has been helping homeowners design and create exciting changes with window treatments whether through custom blinds, shades, plantation shutters and all types of window fashions. Our in-home consultations are free. We are always excited to see our customers love their homes all over again and again with a refreshing new look through the windows.  Let us  help you envision the new look.

Expert Advice by Just Blinds

The Leading Window Treatment Trends of 2024

By Autumn Hooper • 07 Feb, 2024
Each year, styles in window treatments come and go. Trends that were hot last year may carry over to the new interior decor season or may be replaced by something new. In 2024, we are looking at a delightful set of trends in blinds, shades, and curtains that embrace the developing attitudes and popular colors that are already giving the year a unique stylistic personality. At Just Blinds, we are delighted to keep up with the trends, helping homeowners, designers, and property managers to create stunning spaces that align with the latest in window treatment trends. The Hot Trends of 2023 Blinds and Shades Last year in 2023, we saw a great collection of trends, many of which have evolved and strengthened with the new year. 2023 explored the innovations of cell shades and honeycomb shades for the benefits of insulation and light control. Motorization gained a prominant place in both home and office design, and decorators discovered the dynamic possibilities of shades that operate from both the bottom and the top on floor-to-ceiling tracks. Texture saw a real debut with natural colors like wood finishes, linen, dusty rose, and moss green. Though bold patterns also had their day in the sun. The Trending 2024 Window Treatments In 2024, you may recognize a few trends still going strong from the year before, which is good news for those who decorated last year because your style is likely still right on-trend. But we are also seeing new trends developing with elegant enthusiasm. Smart Home Blinds The trend for motorized shades has naturally evolved to favor smart home controls. With a simple voice command, you can take control of all the motorized shades in a room, in your entire home, or set each shade to exactly the height and opacity you desire. Warm Neutrals and Bold Natural Colors Color trends favor a more natural palette. Neutral colors are warmer, even the grays and charcoals have a honey undertone, while natural colors like mossy and forest green are growing stronger in hue paired with a jewelbox of flower petal colors. If you're following the Colors of the Year, you may have also noticed an adoration of ocean blues, and you can match those blues with slightly darker or lighter blinds for beautiful effect. Eco-Friendly and Sustainable Materials Natural materials and textures were popular in 2023, and 2024 takes this trend even further. Blinds made out of recycled materials are now on the rise alongside the growing popularity of blinds made from super-sustainable plants like bamboo, hemp, jute, and grass cloth. These offer natural colors, dynamic textures, and the delight of eco-friendly design. Gauzy Sheer Elegance Sheer curtains and semi-sheer blinds are also in fashion; a classic style that has been floating near the top of popularity for literal centuries. Sheer curtains and blinds maintain privacy while allowing sunlight into the room in a gently diffused glow. They also layer excellently with more robust window treatments. Creative Window Treatment Layering Speaking of layering, we are seeing an enthusiastic embrace of creatively layered styles. Wooden shutters, gauzy curtains, and black-out blinds are among the most popular layers, but decorators are getting creative with how they choose to to layer their window treatments, using both multiple fabrics and structures at the same time. Find the Blinds that Best Suit Your Needs How can you choose fantastic and on-trend blinds that perfectly suit your design needs? Fortunately, the diversity of this year's trends leave room for almost any personal sense of style and the individual needs of each room's windows. Start with the size of your windows and your room's existing color palette. Decide if you want to match, accent, or contrast the colors of the room. Then choose the opacity, privacy, and level of motorized control you desire. This should guide you toward a specific selection that will work well for your room. From there, it's a matter of specific features and your personal sense of style. Reach Out for Expert and On-Trend Advice If you are getting ready to decorate a room and want the perfect window treatments for 2024, we are only a phonecall or a visit away. Give us a call for expert advice in the right blinds or shades for each window in your home. Our on-trend window treatment experts will be glad to help tailor your window treatment design to your personal tastes, the latest trends, and the style of each of your rooms.

Beat the Heat: Best Choices to Keep The Interior of Your Home Cool

20 Jul, 2023
Is your AC bill keeping you down this summer? Is your home too hot? Window treatments can help cool your home, but you need to choose the right ones and use them correctly. Not all window coverings are made equal. Here are some of the best options to help keep your home comfortable and reduce costs this summer: Cellular or honeycomb shades. These are specifically designed to provide a high level of insulation that keeps the heat out of your home. They also don't block the view when completely drawn. As a bonus, you can get them in a wide variety of colors and patterns to match your home and in both top-down and bottom-up configurations. Drapery. Old-fashioned curtains can be surprisingly effective. Choose a medium color and have us add a white plastic backing to reflect heat out of your home. You can also use drapes to block some of the heat without excluding much light, allowing you to enjoy natural light flowing through your drapes. Fabric Roman shades. These are a distinctive option that really dresses up a room, and if you choose the kind with several layers they will definitely help keep the heat out. We have light filtering and blackout options and everything in between. Why Should You Use These Types of Shades or Blinds? The two reasons are to save money and help protect the environment. Good shades keep your home cooler and this means your air conditioning systems don't have to work as hard and use as much energy. In the northern hemisphere, it's most important to have heat-reducing treatments on your southern windows and you can allow more light in through windows that face north. Both cellular and Roman shades can also be motorized and even put on timers to close the shades when you are not there and then let light in when you return. The small amount of energy used by motorized shades is much less than that lost through naked windows. All of these shades can also add to the aesthetics of your room. Cellular shades are great to add a pop of color or a subtle pattern. Both drapery and Roman shades give a soft feel to your windows that then spreads to the rest of your room. What is the Best Choice? The best choice of the three depends on your personal aesthetics. Our designers can help you make the right choice. If you want motorized shades, cellular shades are the lightest and thus use the least energy, and can roll all the way up and down, leaving your windows completely unrestricted. Roman shades are more visible, but can be used to add fabric and color to a room. Many people still love the look of traditional window drapes. Note that you can also combine shades and drapes for the effect you want, both in terms of reducing heat loss and in terms of aesthetics. How Much Can I Actually Save? The amount you save depends on the kind of window covering you use and how much thermal gain your house typically experiences. The larger your windows, in general, the larger the benefit, especially south-facing windows. For example, medium-colored draperies with a white plastic backing can reduce heat gain by as much as 33% for that window. Most window treatments, though, reduce overall heat gain by about 10%. This can significantly reduce your bills, by $100 to $200 a month during the summer. Using the right window treatment can make your home more comfortable in the summer and save money while preserving the environment. For advise on which window treatments to choose for your home and to see our selection of blinds and shades, contact Just Blinds today.
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