Wood Blinds

The slat is most of the cost. A painted basswood slat and a specialty stain on a heavier, thicker slat are not close in price. Thickness is the part nobody asks about and the part that shows, because a thicker slat resists bowing across a wide window.

Width and drop both add material, and width adds it faster, because it also decides the headrail, the tilt mechanism and how many lift cords the blind needs to carry its weight evenly.

Past a certain width we split an opening into two blinds on one continuous headrail, so each half lifts on its own and the slats stay straight. From the room it reads as one blind with a fine break in the middle. It prices as two.

Tape adds cost per blind, and a decorative valance adds more than a standard one. Neither changes how the blind works. Both change how finished the top and face of the window look, which on a wood blind is much of what you are buying.

A wand tilt costs nothing over a tilt cord. Cordless lift adds a mechanism per blind, and motorization adds a motor and power. On wood that earns its money more often than on a light shade, because a heavy blind is the one people quietly stop raising.

Real wood blinds have hardwood slats, usually basswood; faux wood has a composite slat moulded to look like wood. Real wood shows genuine grain and is lighter at the same size, so it stays straighter across a wide window. Faux wood does not warp in humidity, so it takes the bathrooms and sink windows real wood cannot. Painted, the two look much alike — stained, they do not.

In a kitchen, yes — provided the window is away from the sink and the range. Directly over a sink that runs with condensation, or above a cooktop, the slats cup and the finish lifts within a couple of years. In a bathroom with a daily shower, no. Use a faux wood composite there — same slat widths, same tilt, so the look of the house does not change.

2 inch for most windows. It closes tightly, shows a good amount of glass when open, and stacks into about half the pile a 1 inch blind makes over the same drop. Go to 1 inch for small windows and fine trim, and 2½ inch for tall or wide glass where 2 inch looks busy. Wider slats need more frame depth to rotate, so we measure that first.

Stain if there is other woodwork in the room for the blind to belong to and you want the grain visible — expect variation between slats, and expect a dark stain in a sunny window to lighten over years. Paint if you want the blind to disappear against white trim, or a colour identical on every blind in the house. Paint also hides the cord holes better.

It hides the holes punched through each slat for the lift cords, which show as vertical columns of bright dots when the blind is closed. It also adds a wide band of colour across the face, matched or contrasted. It makes the raised stack slightly deeper and costs a little more per blind — and it does not make the blind darker.

No, and no horizontal blind does. Closed, there are still hairline gaps where the slats overlap, gaps at the sides of an inside mount, and pinpricks through the cord holes unless the blind has cloth tape or back-routed cords. A closed 2 inch wood blind makes a room dim and private, not dark. For a genuinely dark bedroom, pair it with a blackout shade or a lined drape.

Both. Cordless lift is our default in a house with young children, since nothing hangs beside the window. Motorized lift and tilt earns its cost on wide, tall or hard-to-reach windows, where the weight of a real wood blind is the reason people stop raising it. Tilt can be motorized on its own if the lift is not the problem.

Wider than the same blind in faux wood, because hardwood weighs less at the same size. There is still a point where one blind gets heavy enough to bow across the headrail and hang unevenly — past it we split the opening into two blinds on one continuous headrail. It reads as a single blind with a fine break in the middle, and each half lifts on its own.