Plantation shutters have been growing in popularity in the UK for well over 20 years now. We should know, The House of Shutters has been here since the beginning! But if you’ve ever wondered or been concerned about just how easy they are to live with then these articles are for you.
Popular misconceptions about shutters pretty much go as follows.
They’ll be really hard to keep clean
I think they’ll cut out too much light.
I’m worried that I won’t be able to get to my window easily.
Over the course of our “living with shutters” series we’ll be discussing all these points and more but for now, let's start with cleaning and maintaining them.
There’s so many louvers it will take me hours to clean them!
True, there can be a lot of louvers (slats) in a shutter panel and if you have a number of panels in a window and then many windows in your home, the thought of cleaning plantation shutters can look like a good reason not to have them.
But, fear not, there’s a simple trick to cleaning shutters that completely dispels this myth and more than that, means they will possibly be the best investment you ever made when it comes to spending your time on the more precious moments in life and not on cleaning your shutters!
How to clean plantation shutters
When your louvers are open (when you’re looking through them) the top surface is the side that will attract your day to day dust.
When your louvers are closed (fully tilted upwards) this same top surface becomes the “back face” of your shutter.
Simply tilt the louvers fully closed (in the upward direction) and open or fold your shutter panels off the window (as though you need to get to the window) you now have a single flat surface that you can simply dust in one single sweeping motion and you're pretty much done!
Now place your shutters back in position and this time tilt the louvers all the way down. The small overlap that you couldn't get to in step 3 is now visible and is the only thing left to do. You can pretty much repeat the previous sweeping action you carried out in step 3 and you're done.
Finally, if you happen to have a hoover that has a small soft upholstery brush, this whole process is even cleaner and simpler than ever.
Go through the above steps using the hoover brush and you’ll be done in double quick time and you won’t be circulating any of the dust back into your home environment. Perfect for allergy sufferers everywhere.
Because shutters are so robust with tier beautiful furniture like qualities, you’ll save a lot of money on dry cleaning curtains, and all the other negative aspects of maintaining other, less durable window treatments.
A Win Win for everyone !