A balcony with the perfect view

A balcony is a welcome feature in any property, old or new.

Shutters for its windows work put a wonderful finishing touch, adding an impressive splash of colour, or, if a lower-key tone is preferred, blending the balcony into a harmonious whole with the roof, front door or other features. Exterior shutters in particular combine a hint of the Mediterranean (conjuring images of Italian villagers pushing open brightly-coloured shutters to let the morning sun flood through flower-bedecked windows) with the added practicality of being able to wander out onto the balcony and close them behind you, giving yourself a moment of privacy out of sight of those in the house.

The balcony commonly referred to as ‘Juliet’ does not generally project out of a building, essentially being part of an upper floor, with a balustrade only at the front. It should be possible to perform a morning weather check, or chat to the Romeo in the garden, without actually getting wet. The ‘French’ balcony is a similarly small, or ‘false’, projection, little more than a set of doors (French windows, naturally) through which you can step to lean against the railings and admire the view.

If you are fortunate enough to have a balcony of whatever form, custom-made interior shutters such as those designed by the team here at Lifestyle Shutters will show it to its best effect. They can be made to suit the architecture of the property, look classic or contemporary - and be just the right shape to match your windows (French or otherwise).

If you have set your heart on exterior shutters, we can talk you through the louvre options – including closed, semi-open or open. All our exterior shutters are finished with powder coated stainless steel hardware, which will keep them looking great over the autumn and winter months and for many summers to come.

Shutters for an English Bank Holiday

The final long weekend of the summer is upon us. We have a Bank Holiday Monday, then that’s our lot until the Christmas festivities commence.

Let’s hope for some clement weather to allow the scent of barbequed food to fill the streets and children to let off steam in parks or at one of the outdoor events that typically take place at attractions the length and breadth of the UK over the long weekend.

However, in life we have to be prepared for all eventualities, and in particular the British weather can never be taken for granted. Behind the dream of a long, hot Bank Holiday spent in the garden is the very possible reality of a cold, rainlashed dreary day.

 Is your home prepared for these circumstances? What you need to do is imagine what it would be like to spend an entire day with your family, and possibly your visiting relations too, indoors - which for many effectively means the living room. While such a room can fairly easily be made cosy and welcoming on a cold winter’s day, thanks to a log fire, in summer this is less easily achieved. A room can feel confining when we know that, but for the presence of cumulonimbi in the sky, we could be taking advantage of the long hours of daylight and doing what folk are supposed to do in summer.

This is where a plantation shutter enters our picture. You can adjust this type of window covering to help create the mood you are after in your living room. Want to shut out the sight of wind and rain pummelling your window panes? Keep the louvres closed. Wish to make the most of the sun, which has put in a brief appearance from behind a dark cloud? Just open the louvres and let the light flood in (closing them again when the kids complain about the glare on the TV screen).

If it happens to be a wet, humid day then a shutter will do a better job than a curtain in letting more air into the room through an open window.

This posting may have planted some ideas in your mind, in which case you should have a look our website and photos of shutters in domestic settings. Then, talk to us about a custom-made design for your living room. Happy Bank Holiday.

Shutters for all shapes

 Of all the points in favour of the wooden shutter, one that is sometimes overlooked, perhaps because it’s a functional point easy to take for granted once the covering is in place, is that they can be made to fit windows of varying and awkward shape.

Hexagonal or triangle or arched, the shutter gets to the places the curtain cannot. How could a curtain cope with a circular porthole?

Fanlight windows, which graced many a doorway to houses designed by the great Robert Adam, whose ‘neoclassical’ ideas introduced light and refined lines to 18th century architecture, are known to be particularly difficult to get right. It’s a job for the expert.

In a similar vein, an Art Deco window with its sinuous lines would quickly lose its allure if no satisfactory covering could be found for it.

As it happens, few windows are a perfect square shape anyway, which is why a custom fitting for shutters is invaluable for the best possible result.

The Lifestyle Shutters craftsmen have the know-how to ensure that your shutters are mounted level and true, and that they will close perfectly.

And, because we work in close consultation with the home owner, each window receives a bespoke dressing.

We’ve added a couple of photos of non-rectangular fittings to give you a taster of what we can do.

Café-style shutters and the Continental touch

By the time you read this you will have enjoyed a well-earned extended break from your computer screen and an August family holiday abroad.

Among the prime pleasures of an overseas break, especially in a European country, is to eat or drink in the congenial surroundings of a tapas bar, bistro, or cafe: call it what you will, sitting in one of these hostelries is the best way of observing the locals, watching the world go past, and achieving something close to blissful relaxation.

At some point in your travels you are bound to come across interior window shutters that allow you to eat your restaurant lunch away from the gaze of passers-by yet still get the benefits of the sunshine – and fresh air – streaming through. They may well have been the appropriately-termed ‘cafe-style shutters (particularly associated in many minds with France), where only the lower portion of the window is covered by a shutter.

Cafe-style shutters don’t have to be confined to cafes. How about bringing a taste of the Continent back home with you by arranging for Lifestyle Shutters to fit cafe-style shutters to your dining room or kitchen? The result will be a stylish, year-round reminder of your holiday experience.

Once in place, perhaps on a sash window with two halves, a simple adjustment of the louvres will give you total privacy when you want it – but at the same time all the light and air you need will enter through the uncovered top half.

For some homeowners, they are the solution for a ground floor bedroom, too. But not everyone relishes being woken early in the morning by sunlight blazing through the uncovered top half of the window arrangement, so a ‘tier-on-tier’ layout would be a fine alternative.

You might have a different idea in mind, or an awkward-shaped window to find a covering for. So bear in mind that full height, cafe-style and tier-on-tier are not the only options available to you. There’s the tracked window version, where shutters can be bi-folded away to allow uninterrupted views. And there are shutters to fit porthole windows, hexagonal windows and more. The team at Lifestyle Shutters can help you arrive at just the right design.

They say travel improves the mind: who says it cannot also improve the home?

Rooms, windows and shutters for life and work in the future

The more hours we spend in our homes, the more important it is to get the design and feel of them right.

It’s an apt time to be thinking about our living environments in a week that has seen the start of a new Channel 4 series, The Secret Life of Buildings, and an Evening Standard piece on the ‘workhomes’ of the future, which will be designed with both working and dwelling in mind.

In the UK, the number of people who work mainly from home has doubled in the last twenty years. There are social and personal benefits to avoiding a daily commute, but these can be cancelled out by the problems caused by a living space that isn’t fit for purpose.

Among the issues picked up on by the Workhome Project, initiated by Dr Frances Holliss (the architect interviewed for the Standard’s feature), is that of public-private space. A journalist might work quite happily from a spare bedroom, and the same space might seem fine for a graphic designer: but if a client wants to pay a visit to the latter’s studio, he/she might have to be led through the hallway of a family home and up the stairs, areas of the house lacking ‘professionalism’ (especially if there is the odd children’s toy in the way).

Solving this scenario would need some creative thought, but simple adaptations in bedrooms of the future, probably involving sliding doors, will separate working areas from those reserved for leisure. Downstairs, sliding covers could be pulled over kitchen units to make the space fit for doing business in.

What have shutters got to do with this?
Firstly, their value lies in their versatility. They suit both the room and the needs of the moment. You can open them wide, use them as ‘blackouts’, or let in just a little or quite a lot of light as you wish. They are perfect for keeping the glare off your computer screen as you work.

Secondly, from a company such as ours you get a bespoke service. We can’t redesign your room layout for you, but we can give you professional advice on the best shutters for you, from planning stage to completion.

For it is the lack of a personalised touch that bothers Tom Dyckhoff, presenter of The Secret Life of Buildings. He shares the view that homes will have to change to suit our 21st century lifestyles, being of the firm opinion that new homes in the UK are too small, with the windows - ‘about the size of a pizza box’ – particularly inadequate in an age when plentiful natural light is highly prized.

But at the heart of the problem, in his view, is the gap between the designers of the building and those who will eventually live in it. An office block might be built with a developer’s immediate needs in mind, with no scope for feedback from the workers who will take up residence (at the time of construction it might not be known what type of companies will one day occupy it). Similarly, in domestic homes, the emphasis might be on ‘one size fits all’, with the input of architects ending with the initial design template.

‘Workhome’ or not, your rooms have to work – for you.