Advantages

The main advantage of vinyl mini-blinds would have to be the exceptionally easy maintenance that these types of blinds come with. All you need to do is spray them with water or wipe them down once in a while and you’ll be good to go. They are practical and functional blind types that will not rot over the course of time if you don’t heavily take care of them. They have the ability to resist tears and scratches and even if you spill something on them you’ll find that they are hardier than you might ever have realized. They also don’t bleach from constant bombardment from the sun, allowing you to keep them as you buy them without having to worry about regular blind rotation. In almost every way conceivable, vinyl mini-blinds come with a low maintenance blind philosophy.

An advantage that some people might think more important than the one listed above is the pocketbook advantage that comes with vinyl blinds. Vinyl blinds and their ability to promote low maintenance is something that is also easy on the pocketbook, but there are properties of these types of blinds that are even more conducive to that type of environment. For example, vinyl mini-blinds are a lot cheaper than their counterparts made from other materials when it comes to making a purchase. You’ll also find that you can easily install those blinds on your own. That’s money that you don’t have to pay someone else to install the blinds for you and therefore there are two direct pocketbook advantages inherent to the use of vinyl blinds.

Disadvantages

Vinyl is a material that cannot be made airtight. This is not to disparage the people that make vinyl blinds, nor is it an attempt to sell this particular material short. The fact of the matter is that the lack of airtight blinds is something that is just inherent to the type of material that vinyl is. No matter what, you are not going to be able to make those blinds airtight. This is just something that you’ll have to live with if you buy vinyl blinds, but it is also something that can have serious ramifications for the future. Since vinyl is not an airtight material, you cannot use vinyl blinds as pseudo-insulating products. In the end, this means that any hopes of making your blinds part of an energy-saving solution for your house will be dashed if you decide to purchase Vinyl blinds.

Another disadvantage that frequently comes with vinyl blinds is the lack of customization. Vinyl blinds are intended to be low-end products that work well in a one-size-fit-all philosophy. However, this type of approach does not sit well with people that would like blinds that fit their windows perfectly. If you are one of these people, you might have to look long and hard before you find a company that delivers to your area and is willing to do customization for vinyl blind products. This is not to say that you won’t be able to find one, just that it might be more difficult for you to find one. And in the end, that is a definite disadvantage.

Conclusion

No matter how you slice it, vinyl blinds come with definite advantages and disadvantages. Learning which is which and how those properties affect your decision is the key to making sure that a vinyl blinds purchase is the right one for you.

Introduction

Solar shades are relatively new additions to the marketplace of shades, but they have quickly become popular because of the excellent green aspects that they have to them.  They are not perfect, but they do appeal quite aggressively to a certain segment of the population.  To find out if you are one of those people, take a look at the advantages and disadvantages that these shades have.

Pros

The green aspect of solar shades should be the main pro in the mind of anyone that is considering purchasing this product.  Solar shades are built in a way that is far more environmentally friendly than just about any other product in the competition.  This is because solar shades are constructed specifically with energy savings in mind.  If you include solar shades in a room, you will be reducing the amount of energy that you have to put into changing the temperature of the room by a significant amount.  Solar shades keep rooms cool during the summer months to a degree that is unmatched by any other type of shade.  No matter how you slice it, solar shades are definitely the eco-friendly option within the shades category.

Solar shades also have the ability to help the individual at the same time that they are helping the individual help the environment.  The main reason for this has to do with incoming solar radiation in the ultraviolet section of the light spectrum.  This type of light is blocked along with a lot of the other light by the solar shades.  The good news when it comes to this type of light is that UV rays are naturally harmful to human skin and over the course of prolonged exposure can cause serious health problems.  This can happen even to someone sitting in front of a window multiple hours a day.  The solar shades will block the incoming UV radiation, ensuring a better long term health outcome for prolonged sitting in front of that particular window in the process.

A third strength of solar shades is the excellent ability to manage glare.  If you have a window that is projecting an unreasonable amount of glare on a computer or television screen, you can manage that glare quite effectively through the use of solar shades while at the same time maintaining the view through the window that you might enjoy looking at.  It is not necessarily a bad thing to have shades that are not made out of opaque material for this reason.  Solar shades can cut down on light transfer which in turn has a significant effect when it comes to reducing the amount of glare that you can see.

Finally, the basic shades are also very cheap.  Basic solar shades can cost you as little as $30 for an entire window depending on the size of the window and the options that you want included with the shade products.  Generally speaking, even with heavier options you won’t pay more than $70 for the basic products.  When compared with some of the other products out there, these shades are very reasonably priced.  That means that they’ll be saving you purchasing power at the time of purchase and energy power after the purchase.

Cons

The main drawback to solar shades is that you are not going to get a shred of privacy if you install these shades over your windows.  The main point of solar shades is not really to provide you with privacy from a particular window.  The main point of solar shades is to manage the light and heat travelling into a room in a way that is environmentally friendly and easy on your pocketbook.  In order to do this to the high standards that solar shades have created, it is necessary to sacrifice some other aspects of shades that have been considered traditional.  The way the science of the shades works, opaque material is one of these things.  When opaque material is taken off the table as a potential materials choice, naturally the privacy that the shades can provide will be reduced by a significant amount.

At the current moment in time, solar shades are extremely limited when it comes to design options and visual value.  The fact of the matter is that this is always likely to be the case since solar shades are far more functional in nature than they are visual.  You can get all of the excellent advantages that were mentioned above, but you are going to have to pay for those advantages through the lack of extra options.  For some people, this is perfectly fine.  For people that want beautiful decorative shades however, solar shades are going to struggle in order to provide the type of visual excellence that you are looking for.  Sometimes, you’ll struggle to even find solar shades across the basic range of colors, something that should indicate to you just how futile it is to try.

One final con worth talking about when it comes to solar shades is the fact that folding them requires a little bit of acrobatics on your part.  It is actually a lot better in the case of solar shades to just leave them on all the time at full stretch.  Over the course of time, folding will create cracks in the solar shades that in turn will cause massive problems in the overall sheen covering each solar shade.  Maintenance will be heightened over the course of time with increased folding and the only way to really deal with this is to manage your folding of the shades down to as little as possible.

Final Thoughts

Solar shades are definitely the environmental option in the world of shades.  Not only do they save you ridiculous amounts of energy costs, but they are also made of green materials that will allow you to harness the power of the sun without being overly wasteful in the process.  This does come with certain drawbacks, but the eco-friendly designer should definitely choose solar shades over any other product currently available within the marketplace.

Introduction

Roman Shades are definitely one of the high end products of the shade world.  If you purchase these shades, you are going for high levels of functionality as well as high levels of visual excellence.  The Roman shades are well known for their abilities in both of those areas, but they also come with a price that will make you do a double-take if you were hoping to purchase these shades cheaply.  This is the universal trade-off that is always made when it comes to quality and cost within the world of purchasing shades, but the good and bad points of Roman Shades below should help you wade through the problems at hand.

The Good of Roman Shades

The main thing for you to realize about Roman shades is that they have the ability to nearly exist no matter what state you put them in.  Generally, Roman shades are like other types of shades in the sense that they should only be put in fully lowered or fully raised positions.  In the case of Roman shades, the shade will hang completely flat when lowered and will be folded perfectly when raised.  They are created with that type of perfection in mind and that is exactly why these Roman shades are some of the most high end products in the business.

The Roman shades are also well known for their ability to insulate against sound waves.  Sound waves are a lot different than light waves.  Not only is the speed at which they travel different, but so too is the speed at which they travel through certain types of substances.  The materials that Roman shades are made of are materials that can really stop the sound waves in their tracks.  In the end, this means that the Roman shades will insulate very well against all types of sound.  If you have a room that is regularly assaulted by noise pollution, Roman shades can help you reclaim the room for any leisure activity that you can think of.

For people that are just as interested in how the shades look as they are in how well the shades work, Roman shades are a dream come true.  The high end nature of Roman shades has convinced manufacturers that putting all of the options on the table for these shade types is a good idea.  For that reason, you can get Roman shades in any color and any type of fabric that you can think of.  Roman shades can be built out of anything and for that reason a person that is seriously thinking about decorating their house as well as can be is a person that can get their Roman shades to look like just about anything.  That is powerful in the world of design, but it is what comes about when you are willing to pay the money in order to get it.

Roman shades are extremely decorative.  Shades generally have a very minimalist design to them for obvious reasons.  Roman shades on the other hand have a design that is intricate enough for them to look like curtains rather than shades.  A fully deployed Roman shade can do a good job of approximating a curtain and that in turn is something that might increase the visual beauty of the room while at the same time adding the functional elements that people tend to love about the shades that they use.  Roman shades are good for a lot of things which is good considering how much you have to pay for them.

The Bad of Roman Shades

The biggest drawback to Roman shades is of course their cost.  Even if you go for a low end product, you are going to end up paying more than $100 for a single shade.  If you want to go for the high end products that have absolutely everything that a Roman shade can have, you are going to be paying double that amount.  Because Roman shades come with so many different options, you can save a lot of money in the variation between the low end Roman shades and the high end ones.  Even the cheapest Roman shades more than twice the cost of the most expensive basic shades of some of the other types.

Roman shades are so intricate in their design that they will attract dust and other types of debris quite quickly.  You’d be surprised at how many particles are floating around in the air of a particular room, but with Roman shades up in that room that seem to attract everything you’ll quickly come to appreciate just how many there can be.  Nevertheless, Roman shades will need to be cleaned because of this.  You will need to take the shades down and wash them yourself.  They can be washed or dry cleaned according to your convenience, but Roman shades do come with the drawback of needing washing on a regular basis.

One final bad point about Roman shades is that they are not really that conducive to high levels of traffic.  If there is a window that people go by all the time, Roman shades could very well get in the way.  An example of this would be a window near a door that leads to the outside.  With people going in and out all the time, Roman shades would do more to get in the way of people than they would to make the room look better.

Conclusion

If you are truly interested in getting all that the Roman shades have to offer, you need to take a close look at everything that it will cost you.  These shades do not come cheap and there is no sense in wallowing in self-pity if you can’t afford the very reasonable yet expensive prices that manufacturers quote for them.  These are high-end products that will do a lot for you if you can afford them, but they are also products that could easily sink a large portion of a room renovation budget if you are not careful with how much you spend on them.

Advantages

Pleated shades usually come at very reasonable prices. The shades have been around for such a long time that this is definitely one of the advantages that you can easily see in them. Most manufacturers have the art of mass producing and/or cheaply producing these shades down to such perfection that they can offer them at prices that might make you sit up and take notice before you even know what the product is.

Pleated shades generally speaking will do the primary job of shades very well. The primary job of shades is to filter out the light and the way in which the pleats within the shades are designed is actually conducive to that type of job. As far as the basic functionality of shades is concerned, the pleated shades will definitely do their job very well.

Pleated shades also come with the option for blackout fabric use. This is something that is very important for pleated shades since they are already purchased by people as a low-cost option for getting the basic job of blocking out the light done. If you purchase a blackout fabric for use with your pleated shade product, you’ll discover that the cost is a little extra but the returns are far greater than the extra cost that you pay. The blackout fabric is not a fabric type that has earned its name poorly. It is actually something that can completely block the light out if you purchase the right shade.

Another thing that many people have noticed when using pleated shades is that they are great when it comes to blocking noise out. This is not necessarily something that a person looking to purchase shades is looking for, but it certainly can’t hurt to have those benefits covering windows in certain rooms. For a person shopping for shades for their study or a bedroom, noise cancelling shades can be very good as an investment. Once again, the noise cancelling nature of the shades directly follows from the way in which the pleats are created on the shades.

Finally, pleated shades are very easy to use. Because there are no complicated parts or extra options on most of these shades, you’ll be able to install and use them quite simply if you want to do everything yourself. In this sense, the simplicity of pleated shades is something that works well for a person that would like to do everything on their own and avoid the hassle of paying someone else to do the installation.

Disadvantages

Pleated shades tend to have design options that are not very versatile. Because they tend to be excellent value options, pleated shades do not give you the same flexibility in terms of colors and textures that you would get from some of the other shade types. This is really part of the trade-off that you should willingly make when you purchase the pleated shades. As part of a comfortable and warm room design that isn’t over the top, they can still be quite an economical option for you to pursue.

Another way in which pleated shades lack versatility is in the options for setting them on your window. Because of their value nature, pleated shades will usually only come with up or down options. It’ll be hard and in most cases extremely annoying for you to set pleated shades up on your window in any other way. Of course, this design choice makes perfect sense when you consider that their primary option is either to block the light coming through the window or else to get out of the way and let it shine.

One more problem with pleated shades is that they don’t stack up as well against their counterparts when it comes to insulation. The material that is often used to make pleated shades is not material that generally does insulation very well and the pleating that is done within the shades does not really help matters that much. They still have a decent amount of insulation in them and for that reason you can be sure that you’ll notice some change in temperature variance when you install them. That being said, the change in temperature will not be anywhere near as good as it could be with other shade products.

Lastly, pleated shades might not be the first choice of most family members as far as fashion is concerned. They are homey and generally aged as far as flair is concerned, so people might balk at installing them in certain places. If your installation is one that requires excellent fashion that is completely up to date, you might find that the pleated shades do not really help you out that much.

Conclusion

In the end, the best way for you to look at pleated shades is heavy on the economy and light on the functionality. They’ll get the job done, but they won’t really give you anything extra than simple shade from the light. Of course, the price is right as well. For some people, that type of deal is good enough for the shades that they want for a particular room. For other people, that deal is not good enough. If you are one of these people you should probably consider other shade options with the understanding that you’ll have to pay more in order to get those shade types.

When people talk about the sizes of mini-blinds, what they are referring to is the width of each of the blinds. A full window blind is made up of a number of different runs that are strung together in a way that is similar to a ladder. Each of the rungs in a window blind is usually the same width and it is that width that lends its value to the overall measure of the size of the mini-blind product that you purchase. Generally speaking, mini-blinds will fall into one of three types of sizes.

½-inch

The ½-inch size of mini-blinds has been the most popular for a very long time now. The main reas on for this is that the smaller size of the rungs in the mini-blinds used on the window or door actually has the effect of making the space look larger than it is. This can also make your room look larger than it is and is a visual illusion that many people welcome. For windows and doors that happen to have a very shallow depth, these blinds are absolutely perfect.

Generally speaking, the ½-inch mini-blinds are associated with a look that is more modern than either of the other two and that is another reason why people tend to purchase these blinds more than others. Gaining a contemporary look for the inside of your house is important in the eyes of many and these blinds will accomplish that for you quite nicely.

1-inch

1-inch blinds are an interesting creature because of the fact that they were created by different companies almost as a compromise between the ½-inch and the 2-inch models. 1-inch blinds are small enough that they retain some of the contemporary look and feel of the ½-inch models while at the same time requiring less labor to put together. For that reason, they also have some of the cost-effective nature of the 2-inch mini-blinds. They can be thought of as the jack-of-all-trades in the world of mini-blinds because they’ll give you some of the advantages of both extremes while at the same time maintaining some of the disadvantages.

2-inch

The 2-inch blinds are less popular than the ½-inch blinds, but are a great purchase for anyone that is looking for bargain basement prices. At the same time, 2-inch blinds are a throwback to the oldest of the old venetian blinds. They give your room the opposite look and feel of the ultramodern contemporary blinds in the ½-inch range and for that reason are heavily preferred by people that like their houses to have some old world feel.

Good Points

The style in which micro mini-blinds have been created is perhaps the most compelling visual good reason to have them in your home. According to all of the experts that really know their stuff when it comes to the world of interior design, the micro mini-blinds are the ones that have the sleekest look to them. At the same time, they are also the blinds that have the most contemporary look to them. For many people that are trying to compliment the rest of their interior décor with the blinds, this could be the difference between actually using blinds and turning to something else. The fact of the matter is that these micro mini-blinds can do a lot to augment a contemporary style of design and for that reason they are very popular blind types.

Another interesting visual aspect to micro mini-blinds is the fact that you can rotate them into non-existence. These blinds are so thin that when you actually rotate them to the open position, they can look almost invisible if you are looking from the right angle. This is something that is pretty much specific to micro mini-blinds alone and it is an excellent quality that they bring along with their purchase. It is one of those things that may or may not come in handy, but is good to know nonetheless.

You have a greater degree of choice with these blinds when you are deciding the length that you’d like them to be. Since the width of the principal slat unit is smaller, you have more choice in the actual length. This is something that can actually allow you to cut down a bit on the overall cost due to materials and can therefore counteract some of the disadvantage that comes with having more units and having to pay more for the overall unit. Flexibility also has a certain intangible value to it, something else that is worth mentioning as a good point when it comes to micro mini-blinds.

Bad Points

Micro mini-blinds have more separate parts that need to be made than other types of mini-blinds. This is reasonably obvious. For the same amount of space that needs to be covered and a thinner slat width, it should be plainly obvious that micro mini-blinds will require the creation of more slats than their thicker counterparts. Unfortunately, the creation of these extra slats does usually end up raising the price of micro mini-blinds. Even though they aren’t cheap by any stretch of the imagination however, many would argue that the good points mentioned above are worth the increased cost. To the average person however, that increased cost is still a bad point about purchasing these blinds.

Another bad point that is worth mentioning about micro mini-blinds is the fact that these blinds are not the most durable ones on the market. To some extent, this is a function of the material that is used in the creation of the blinds. However, any material that is used to make micro mini-blinds is going to do better in just about any other situation that you can imagine. For that reason, you need to be very careful when maintaining the micro mini-blinds that come along. This is not to say that they are high maintenance, but it is more to say that they can’t take as much punishment as blinds that have thicker slats.

Final Thoughts

Generally speaking, micro mini-blinds work well with contemporary décor and shallow windows or doors. These are the situations that are recommended the most on the part of manufacturers and most experts in the décor industry would agree with those assertions. Keep that in mind when shopping around for blinds for your house.

Advantages

The main advantage of bamboo mini-blinds would be the advantage of beauty. Just about anyone that has been around bamboo would be able to attest to the sheer beauty that comes from this type of material. Bamboo has long been used in construction because of its beauty and the mini-blinds that are created from it will do as much to enhance the look of the room’s interior as they will to help protect you against the sun’s rays. There are not many types of mini-blinds that can pull double duty in that way, but the bamboo mini-blinds that you purchase are blinds that almost universally have this particular ability.

Another advantage that bamboo mini-blinds have is their ability to act as excellent insulators of energy and heat. You can trap heat within a particular room through the use of bamboo mini-blinds and you can do the same thing in order to keep a room cool during the summer months. Bamboo blinds are a decent choice for you to use if you are interested in making blinds part of an overall energy-saving strategy within your home.

It is possible to get bamboo blinds created that stay in the same position and let light through miniscule holes within the blinds. It has to do with a particular way of weaving blinds together and it is yet one more advantage that is inherent to the use of bamboo in the creation of these mini-blinds.

Disadvantages

If there is one giant criticism that could be made of bamboo mini-blinds, that criticism would have to be that these blinds have some of the most intense structural weaknesses that you will see in blinds. Bamboo is not necessarily a weak substance, but something about the conversion of bamboo from its natural form to the blinds creates a weakness that makes a lot of the blinds quite delicate. You need to handle them with care in order to avoid damaging them. Most people will damage their blinds in one way or another through a careless moment and that of course will increase the amount of money that you pay for the maintenance of these blinds over the course of time.

The cost of bamboo mini-blinds is another thing that you seriously need to consider when thinking about the disadvantages of these particular blind types. This is not to say that paying more money is always a bad thing. After all, many would argue that bamboo blinds are worth the extra money invested. However, upfront costs do make a difference in budgeting for blinds and that is why the increased cost is viewed as a disadvantage in this particular discussion. Bamboo blinds will cost you more money and that is money that you’ll have to pull from somewhere else if you want to afford these blind types.

Finally, craftsmanship can be an issue when you are dealing with bamboo mini-blinds. Both the material used and the way in which the blinds are created should be examined by you ahead of time in order to make sure that this disadvantage does not sink your ship before it even sets sail.

Good Points

Durability would be the first good point worth mentioning about aluminum blinds. The durability of these blinds will allow them to last a lot longer than their vinyl counterparts and that is something that can allow you to simply put the blinds in place and then forget about them once you have done so.

Sturdiness is another good point about aluminum mini-blinds. One of the worst things that can happen with a blind is a minor error that is not enough for you to replace the blind, but noticeable enough for you to have to explain it away whenever you have company over to the house. This can happen a lot with wood and vinyl blinds, but it is a lot less common with aluminum because of the general sturdy nature of this particular metal.

The main bad point of aluminum as discussed in more detail below is the lack of insulation that you get from aluminum blinds. The main reason for this is that aluminum mini-blinds are fantastic at blocking light out and preventing it from entering the house to begin with. There are often two sides to every coin and this one is the corresponding advantage to the first disadvantage discussed in the following section.

Aluminum blinds bring an important elegance to any room that they are in. When aluminum material is combined with a really small slat size, you’ll find that the end result is blinds that look about as contemporary and elegant as blinds can look. The fact that they also come with a huge selection of colors is something that is not bad at all. The amount of choice you get in how your aluminum blinds look is something that is pretty much unparalleled as far as the industry of manufacturing blinds is concerned.

Bad Points

One major drawback of aluminum mini-blinds is the fact that they do not really have any insulation features. When you look at some of the reasons that people would want blinds in their house, insulation for the express purpose of energy conservation is one of the big ones. If that is your goal in purchasing blinds, you need to ignore the aluminum side of the marketplace because there is no energy conservation potential in these blinds. They are good for other things, but not for insulating the glass panes of your house.

Even though aluminum mini-blinds are definitely durable and sturdy, they are also a lot more rigid than other non-wood blind types. For that reason, you’ll find that folding and bending is a lot harder to do with aluminum blinds. They either won’t fold, or you’ll create permanent crack lines in the blind that will be a lot harder to deal with later on down the road. It’s an unfortunate truth, but one you should definitely know about if you are considering making this type of purchase.

Finally, another bad point regarding aluminum mini-blinds that is worth mentioning is that they are surprisingly poor when it comes to resisting scratch marks. You’d think that a strong metal would be able to resist scratching better, but the facts are the reverse of this. If you have trouble believing that, think of how easy it is to scratch the side of your car. The same is true for metallic substances that are used to create blinds. Aluminum may look great, but it will also scratch easily so you need to handle the blinds with care.

Conclusion

When all is said and done, you need to consider both the good and the bad of aluminum blinds and decide whether the good points outweigh the bad points. For example, if you are normally a pretty careful person that doesn’t need insulation and would like to maximize the choice in how your blinds look, aluminum blinds are a great investment. If on the other hand you are a person that prefers to save as much money as possible, aluminum might not be the best choice for you. Figure out what you want and then purchase the blinds based on that decision.