Shutters or blinds?

Blinds are the more budget-friendly option, across a wide range depending on fabric, size and whether you motorise them. Shutters are a premium product and priced accordingly — they use more material, take longer to make, and are fitted rather than hung.

Compared over a decade the gap narrows, because a fabric blind in a sunny Queensland room is not a twenty-year product and a shutter is. But the cheque you write on day one is bigger, and that is a real consideration.

Both control light. Shutters do it with more precision — you can angle the louvres by degree, and on a taller panel with a mid rail you can have the bottom half closed for privacy and the top half open for light. A blind is essentially up or down, with some tilt on a venetian.

Shutters also give you shade and airflow at the same time, which no fabric blind can do.

A shutter is dusted and occasionally wiped. A fabric blind eventually needs more than that, and fabric in strong sun fades — which is why we recommend sunscreen fabrics for anything facing north or west.

Thermalite shutter frames and panels carry a 25-year warranty that transfers with the house. Blinds carry two years. That gap is not marketing, it reflects what each product is.

Blinds if the budget is the constraint, if you like changing the look of a room, if you need genuine blackout, or if it is a rental.

Shutters if you are staying, if the room has a heat or humidity problem, if you want privacy without losing light, or if you would rather buy once.

Plenty of houses end up with both — shutters through the living areas and bedrooms, blockout blinds where the room needs to be properly dark. A free in-home measure is the fastest way to work out which rooms want which.