At the risk of being no committal, the ‘right’ choice of louver or shutter slat is down to personal preference. You cannot make this decision looking at the size of the louvered shutters in isolation, but instead should factor in the size of the window (therefore the shutters), the color of your shutters, and the number of panels your choosing for your shutters.
A good general rule of thumb with successful shutter design, especially in today’s homes is that ‘less is more’. Trends at the moment show customers wanted to maximize the feeling of space within their homes, therefore going with wider shutter panels or having a lesser quantity of shutter panels on the window, all help make the window and therefore the room feel a lot less busy.
.jpg)
As such, many US shutters customers who buy shutters from The Shutter Store are buying shutters with large sized louvers such as 3 1/2”. The 2 1/2" shutters slats remain a popular choice but the popularity of 3 1/2” slats has seen a marked increase.
The reason that larger louvers such as 3 1/2” are favored among our customers is that the slats are spaced further apart therefore give a larger gap between the louvers. This allows more light into the room, between the shutter slats (if desired – you can of course tilt the shutters’ louvers at an angle if you wish to gain privacy or reduce the amount of light into the room). With most customers buying shutters and not opening the panels, getting maximum light flexibility is helped by going for a wider slat such as the 3 1/2”.
Of course, that’s not to say that the 1 7/8” (or 47mm) plantation shutter is not still a good choice in the right situation. Country cottages or smaller house windows can be much better suited to a smaller louver if desired. However, just be careful if you have a larger, tall window as with smaller width louvers there are more louvers (or blades as they can sometimes be termed) per panel and this can look overly busy.
Not sure which shutters louvers you should choose? Email us a photo of your window, with a little more background information about how you’d like your shutters to look and we’d love to mail back with our suggestions! The Shutter Store, home of wooden louvered shutters.
