Three Steps to Picking The Perfect Blinds for Your House

Moving into a fixer upper comes with all sorts of fun quirks. Luckily for us, the previous owner had recently replaced all the windows (Hallelujah!) but what they didn’t do was replace all the window coverings. And what a hodge podge they were! There was a deep sage green blind in the living room, cream in the dining room, wood blinds in one of the bedrooms, vertical blinds in the master, oh the list goes ON!

I’m pretty sure Blinds.com noticed the insanity that was our window covering situation when we shared the “before” photos because they quickly reached out and asked if we needed help. LOL YEP, SURE DO! And so after five months of me debating what the perfect blind was (they have so many good options!), I finally decided and TADA! All our blinds match and I’ve never been happier in my whole life. I thought I’d share today a bit about my process for picking our blinds and how just that one change made a huge difference in how much light we got in our house. Like, HUGE!

Blinds.com lets you chat with one of their experts (A real, live person. hallelujah!) and it was incredibly helpful in making my decision. In fact, since I’m the most indecisive human on the planet, we may as well have been BFFs (Hi, Dixie!!). Here’s the three steps we took to pick the perfect blinds for our house.

1. Determine your priorities.

First, before even looking at blind-types, you must decide on your priorities and preferences. I knew that I wanted all of our shades to let light in. I am not a personal fan of black out shades (Even in my bedroom, I feel like a zombie if I don’t wake up to the natural light!). But I also knew that I wanted some sort of privacy as if you’ve ever been in a neighborhood in LA, you know that you can basically shake your neighbors hand while standing in your respective kitchens making dinner.

With Arlo now in the picture, I knew I needed something that was safer for him. And last, I knew I wanted the blinds to be discreet and blend with the window frames since I would also be adding drapes in each room.

2. Measure Everything!

Now take a look at your actual windows. And by look, I mean measure, measure, measure! Dixie taught me the importance of exact measurements. Do not cut corners here, folks! I learned that every single window can have different measurements, even if they all appear to be the same size from afar. In addition to that, the depth of your windows will play a big part into which types of blinds will look best on your windows. As someone who had never bought blinds before, I hadn’t even thought about that!

I learned our windows were very shallow, which leads me to my next point…

3. Cross Check + Compare!

Now it’s time to take your measurements and your preferences and determine what blinds will fit and check all your boxes! Based on my preferences alone, I had narrowed down my choices to roller shades and cellular shades. I told Dixie this and she took a look at the measurements and let me know that because our windows were so shallow, cellular shades would without a doubt be our most discreet, modern-looking option. Being able to talk to her made me so grateful that Blinds.com had that service available because, as you know, I’m pretty famous for basing my decisions solely on looks and not looking at measurements. Ha!

Our final choice was the Signature Light Filtering Cellular Shades. Once you determine what blinds work and look best for your home, you get to do all the fun stuff! We were able to get samples of allllll different colors of the cellular shades. We got several whites, so we could perfectly match our paint color, and also a couple shades of light pink, in case I decided to go a little more bold. (You may have seen my insta poll about this a few weeks back!)

Having the samples was KEY, I took them into each room to see how they looked with the various light sources we have and finally decided to go with white. It feel the most modern, and since they had so many white options, and “Moonlight” perfectly matched our paint color.

With a decision made, we took our measurements and custom ordered all of our blinds to be installed. We went with light filtering (privacy, but lets light in) and cordless (Super simple to open and shut, no cords or buttons involved!). When the guy came to install them, we literally tried to hire him to do all the rest of the work on our house because he was SO nice, efficient and knowledgable. HAHA!

We immediately could not believe the difference this simple change made. Even though we kept the blinds up during the day, the green, black-out shades just being on the windows really weighed the room down. Replacing them, instantly opened them up. And removing some of the wood shutters and blinds from the other windows did the same. We suddenly were like “Wow, our house isn’t that dark after all!” and realized we didn’t have to do all the renovations we had planned to let more light in.

I swear every day when we go to open the blinds (one of Arlo’s favorite morning tasks to join in on), one of us says “Wow, I love these blinds.” I’m really not just saying that!!! They’re so easy to open and they’re such good quality.

What’s the blind situation like in your house?? Have you replaced yours and had a similar realization!? Are you a black-out shade or not-blackout-shade person?? (I find this topic particularly opinionated!) GOOD NEWS! If your’e in need of new blinds too, Blinds.com is offer 20% of your purchase with code ‘StudioDIY’! Cannot be combined with any other offers, expires 5/31/18. Go get your blinds on, kids!

This post was created in partnership with Blinds.com. All content and opinions are that of my own! Thank you for supporting the sponsors that keep the Studio DIY party going! Read more about my editorial policies here.

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