Cheap Faux Wood Blinds Offer Real Value

Wooden Venetian blinds with 2-inch or 3-inch wide slats are among the most popular and stylish modern window coverings chosen by interior design professionals and do-it-yourself home decorators alike.

But the cost of real wood, along with growing concern over worldwide hardwood forest sustainability, has caused many people to reconsider wood alternatives when selecting their window blinds.

Cheap doesn’t have to mean low quality or inferior appearance; in fact the composite materials used to create today’s ‘faux’ or ‘alternative’ wooden blinds produce cheaper window treatments that look almost as good as real hardwood products! Read on to learn why faux wood Venetian blinds are one of the best values in window coverings today.

Benefits of Faux Wood Window Blinds

The most obvious advantage of alternative wood window coverings is lower cost, but the list of benefits also includes:

1. Faux wood blinds do not warp, making them the perfect choice to cover windows in humid environments such as a bathroom or kitchen or where direct sunlight beats down on the window a majority of the time. Especially if you live in a more humid climate, faux wood blinds will outlast real wood products by far!
2. Faux wooden blinds are easier to clean than real hardwood blinds; you can dip them in soapy water to deep clean faux wood products whereas real wood blinds require manually cleaning each slat individually. This makes preventing grime, mold or mildew from building up on your window blinds simple with periodic dusting and wiping the slats with a mild cleaning solution.
3. A wide range of simulated wood grains, colours and finishes is available in both made to measure and custom window sizes, making it easier than ever to fit and install your own faux wood blinds.
4. Vinyl and other materials used to manufacture faux wood blinds do not show nicks and scratches the way painted wood blinds do since the color runs all the way through the vinyl composite materials used to make faux wood blinds.
5. Faux wood blinds are lighter weight than real wooden window shades or blinds, making them easy and safe to install.

An Affordable Alternative to Wood Blinds

Practical, easy to operate and providing superior privacy and light control in any room in your home, the faux blinds offered today by major manufacturers also add insulation to keep your room cool in the summer and warm in the winter. They increase your home or apartment’s resale value and enhance your home décor.

You can leave your blinds bare or add a decorative top treatment such as a cornice or valance for a true designer look. You can also enhance the appearance of cheap faux blinds by adding decorative curtains or drapes to complete your window treatment in high style.

Buying ‘cheap’ blinds doesn’t have to mean suffering poor quality, fit or finish! Faux wooden blinds should look as good as real wood blinds without the expense or associated ecological, maintenance and longevity concerns.

The added durability of composite materials make faux wood window blinds a great choice for households with young children or pets. Other names for these affordable window coverings include alternative wood, simulated wood, Poly Wood and vinyl window blinds or shades. But, when you talk to a retailer, designer or installer about them, everyone will know what you mean when you say ‘faux wood blinds’.

How are Inexpensive Faux Wood Blinds Manufactured?

Alternative wood products are made using either vinyl or a composite of vinyl and wood materials. The only real drawback to these high tech materials is that they feel like plastic to the touch. For people who just can’t bear to touch their window treatment and feel plastic instead of the wood grain texture of real wood its worth paying a premium for the real thing.

Personally, I don’t really care what my blinds ‘feel’ like so the discount faux wood blinds are a perfect, more economically sound choice. You’ll have to decide for yourself how important ‘touch’ is in selecting your window blinds and shades!

The important thing is that you now have more choices in window fashions today. If you choose a fine quality, painted finish for your real wood blinds, you will pay a premium price but you’ll know you have the natural beauty and warmth of real wood. However, if the difference in texture and touch is a minimal consideration, you’ll save 25% or more by selecting an alternative wood blind or shade.

Faux Wood Blind Styles

Because of the manufacturing process and lighter weight of alternative wood products, you don’t have quite as many options as you do with real wood. For example, with vinyl products, the slat widths tend to be smaller to make them easy to angle. This means the blind will require more ladders (slats) in the stack for a given drop than for a similar wood blind.

If you want slats wider than 2 inches, look at the composite vinyl/wood products. The wood content in these composite materials adds weight and rigidity to the slats, making them more similar in appearance and operation to real wood slats. This adds a little to the price but gives you a look that can be very similar to real wood while still saving you money.

The style and slat width of your blinds is completely a personal choice. The theme and décor of your room can also help you determine whether wider or narrower slats are appropriate. If you have a more contemporary, modern or transitional style of room, the narrower all-vinyl faux wood blinds in white or another colour finish look right at home.

For more traditional décor styles, the wider slats are popular, especially in naturally stained wood grains such as cherry, maple or other hard woods. Obviously the look of real wood is harder to match with natural finishes versus the look of painted wood finishes, which can be hard to tell from vinyl or vinyl/wood composite finishes since wood grain and tone are less important factors.

Faux Wood Blinds Shopping Tips

• Look for blinds made by the major manufacturers such as Bali, Hunter Douglas or Levolor; these will offer the best quality ladders and operating controls. You can often find these brands on sale in large retails stores and home improvement centres at discounted prices.
• Check the warranty. Even if you buy a major brand, the various product lines and distribution channels in the window fashions industry means that price points, quality and product guarantees vary widely. You want to buy from a discount retailer to save money, but not at the cost of inferior customer service!
• Does the warranty cover operating controls or just the materials? The quality of the opening/closing/angling mechanisms, pull cords, wands, etc. are more likely to fail than the materials used to make the slats!
• What is the returns and exchange policy? If you accidentally order the wrong size or get your faux wood blinds home and realize the colour or finish is all wrong, can you return or exchange them?
• Be sure you have complete and accurate measuring instructions before you order faux wood window blinds; every brand and style varies in terms of mounting hardware, operating controls, inside vs. outside mount, etc.
• Since most of the major brands make faux wood blinds and shades, you have a lot more options than even a few years ago. And they continue to make advances in the quality, durability and style of faux wood products. Unless you can find a REALLY good price on no name or generic blinds, stick with the better brand names and shop around for the right deal.
• Every maker has various lines, so what is high end in one brand may be middle of the road in another. Check specifications and quality of the product to compare faux wood blinds ‘apples to apples’.

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