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?