When the weather improves, we look forward to throwing open our doors and windows and letting some warmth and sunshine into our homes.
French Doors are a beautiful addition to any home, but the wrong type of blind can make using your French Doors more of a chore than a pleasure.
French doors often have large windows, which is a great style feature but can make choosing the right type of blind a challenge. Making the right choice can help you get the most out of the access to your garden, balcony or conservatory.
Before you even begin to think about your preferred style of blind, think about the size, shape and configuration of your doors, and the problem you would like the blind to solve.
Are you concerned with privacy, light levels or insulation, and are you concerned with ease of care?
Types of Blinds
Vertical Blinds for French Doors
Vertical blinds are made up of vertical strips of fabric called louvres or slats, which are attached to a railing at the top of the blind. The slats can be twisted with a cord or wand to either obscure the door or window or let in lots of light.
They are great for maximizing privacy. When fully closed, the room will be completely private. However, when partially open, they will still afford you a good degree of privacy with a generous amount of light.
As well as letting in the desired amount of light, vertical blinds also allow you to open your French Doors to let fresh air into the house, whilst still maintaining privacy and blocking out very glaring light.
They are easier to clean than blinds with horizontal slats, and are available in a range of colours to suit your decor.
Roller Blinds for French Doors
A roller blind is a single piece of fabric that unrolls to cover a window or door.
Roller blinds are space-saving. They're barely visible once rolled right up and when not in use, they don’t clutter up the area around the door or make access tricky.
If you want to block out light to the room completely, blackout roller blinds will enable this. They also offer you the largest choice of colour, pattern and fabric types, and are the simplest to create to fit very narrow or very wide spaces.
A traditional roller blind will need to be fully rolled up to open and close inwards opening French doors. And even if the doors open outwards, a blind half unrolled could be an obstruction.
You can clean your roller blinds with the brush attachment of a vacuum cleaner, and remove most marks with lukewarm water, washing up liquid and a microfibre cloth.
Pleated Blinds for French Doors
Pleated blinds are also a great choice if you're trying to save space.
Often found in conservatories, they are made with a single layer of fabric, and take up very little room when either lowered or raised.
They offer you privacy and shade whilst still maintaining a level of light you can control with your choice of a wide range of fabrics.
Like a roller blind, they will need to be almost completely raised to allow easy use of the doors.
If your pleated blinds require more than quick dust, a damp sponge should do the trick.
Venetian Blinds for French Doors
Venetian blinds are horizontal slats covering a window suspended on ladder cords.
Their timeless design means you can create a very contemporary or traditional look, and they can be supplied in a huge range of finishes, from painted wood to faux wood to aluminium.
Like vertical blinds, they make changing the level of light entering the room very easy to adjust You can angle the slats to direct the light to where you would like it to fall.
Venetian blinds won't block out 100% of the light entering the room, and only offer insulation when they are completely closed. But they do offer excellent and adjustable levels of ventilation.
Contrary to popular belief, they are not too difficult to clean. Yes, there are a lot of slats available for dust to settle on, but it can be removed quickly with a feather duster, or using the brush attachment from a vacuum cleaner with the slats fully closed.
Again, they will need to be almost completely raised to allow easy use of the doors.
Which leads us on to....
Perfect Fit Blinds for French Doors
If you like the idea of Roller, Pleated or Venetian Blinds, but worry that they will interfere with the opening and closing of the doors and subsequent access, consider Perfect Fit Blinds.
They are made to measure and fully integrated into the window frame, rather than being fitted to the door frame or surrounding wall.
No drilling is required, and their free-floating design allows any part of each of the windows they're fitted into to be covered up for really versatile light control.
Available in a wide range of colours and designs, they will make choosing your desired level of brightness, privacy, insulation and ventilation a breeze!
