How Do Blinds Affect Your Home Insulation?
Did you know windows and blinds play a huge role in your home insulation? There’s so much focus on the walls and the type of insulation filling them that people frequently forget about windows. Windows can make or break your home’s insulation. You know that saying: a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Well, a window can be your home’s weakest link. Let’s talk about how you can keep your home well insulated by buying the right blinds.
Windows and Insulation
What many people don’t know is that modern windows are actually insulated already! You might have some guesses about how. Some people assume having two panes of glass is inherently insulating. The truth is, there is an actual gas between the panes that insulates the window.
Windows have been made with gas insulation for decades. The gas used is completely transparent and is denser than air. That makes it great for keeping out heat or cold. While there’s a lot to be said on how insulation works, what’s really important is noting that windows are already insulated. However, this insulation is not as strong as a solid wall with insulation inside of it. Therefore, your window is still your weakest link.
This is especially important to note if your home is old or you’ve never had your windows replaced. After decades of use, windows will begin to lose the effectiveness of their seal and the gas will begin to leak out. Therefore, they lose their insulation over time.
How Do Blinds Affect Your Home Insulation?
If you want to improve your windows’ insulation so that they’re slightly less of a weak link, blinds are the next step. If you can’t afford to replace old windows, good blinds can also help make up for the loss of insulation in the window itself.
Because of how insulation works, the more layers between one temperature and another, and the material those layers are made of, improves the insulation. The layers and materials keep the temperatures separate. Therefore, adding blinds to the mix helps keep the cold or heat that’s managed to make it past the window from getting to your interior as fast.
Which Blinds Insulate the Best?
To get the best insulation from your blinds, you’ll want one or more of a few different qualities.
- Multiple layers in blinds make them better insulators. The more layers, the more effective they are than a single layer of the same material. Because of this, honeycomb blinds, which have cells of air between their layers, are a good choice. Sheer vertical blinds are also great, as they have two layers of fabric.
- Blinds that completely cover a window are better insulators because they block gaps where cold or heat can get through. The same way a draft from an open window or rays of sunlight can get in past a gap in your blinds, temperature that’s transferred through the window can get through these spaces easier as well. Blinds like roller shades with side channels completely cover all gaps between the window frame and blinds. Sheer vertical blinds can also help minimize gaps by being pulled flush with the window frame.
- A thick fabric is also more effective than something thinner, as it’s harder for any affected air to get past it. The double layer of sheer vertical blinds includes a thicker layer that’s heavy enough to block out sunlight entirely.
Buying Quality Blinds
You can probably guess how ineffective standard, slatted blinds are for home insulation. With so many gaps and, frequently, being made of metal, these blinds do virtually nothing to insulate. Buy quality blinds from Domir and keep your home the temperature you pay the electric company to make it. Don’t fall victim to poor window insulation wasting your money.
