Everything You Need to Know to Choose the Best Bamboo Shades

Choosing bamboo blinds is not an easy task, so I’m breaking down everything you need to know to choose the best bamboo shades! From the texture and color to the mount and cord, I’m sharing it all! Even the part about how to make sure to keep the neighbors from being able to see you running around in your pj’s!

I feel like I am qualified to talk about choosing the best bamboo shades because it took me no less than 100 years to choose them for my home. Just kidding. It was about 7 months, but still a crazy long time to choose some blinds. But I get the apprehension. It’s a big deal and not an inexpensive change, so I didn’t want to mess it up! Truth be told I’m a bit of a scaredy cat sometimes when it comes to decorating decisions and get analysis paralysis just like errrr-body else.

And a little bit more truth telling – I’m a teeny bit of a perfectionist, so the thought of changing something and not liking it after I change it terrifies me. (Hello recent rug purchase that didn’t work out the first time … eek!}

Well, the I’ll jump to the ending first. All of my hesitation was for nothing! I love these bamboo shades and am thrilled with how they look and how they work in my home, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.

I have wanted bamboo shades in my home since shortly after we moved in. I’ve talked about it for years whenever I share about my eat-in kitchen. I knew they would look so good in there with the wall of windows. And I knew they would look fabulous on my living room windows, too, flanking my fireplace and mantel. And I was right!

So, let’s chat about all the things bamboo shades so that you can feel more confident when choosing them for your home!

Everything There is to Know About Choosing the Best Bamboo Shades

Quality: First of all, quality matters. I got my blinds from SelectBlinds.com and I can tell you right now that these are high quality blinds. I have some that aren’t from SelectBlinds and I can tell a huge difference! So, don’t think you can skimp on this if you want a quality product.

Texture and Colors: The materials, textures and colors used to make a bamboo shade run the gamut. There is every texture and color that you can imagine and which they are all beautiful, they may not all work well in your home. So, it’s important to decide which style of a blind you want in your home. The good news is that with all of the variety, there is something for every decor style!

Get Samples: The wonderful thing about SelectBlinds.com is that they offer free samples! This is an amazing service and I utilized it twice! 😬 I selected a bunch of styles and colors from the Designer Series collection. I literally sat with all of those samples for 4 months. I just couldn’t decide. Well, I would think I had made a decision, but then I would waver back and forth. I thought that maybe bamboo shades just weren’t for me.

But I overcame my analysis paralysis and went back to the drawing board to order some new samples. And this time there was a clear winner!

Don’t just settle for something because it’s the best of what you got. Order some more samples and keep trying until you get the best fit for your home!

I knew I wanted a wood tone that was a medium tone and would compliment both browns and grays. I settled on Jute Wheat, because the texture is just so pretty with the coastal farmhouse style that I love. And the color complimented the wood tones I already have.

P.S. I see a lot of people asking about how to match your blinds to your floor color. I’m not a professions designer, so take my advice with a grain of salt. But when it comes to matching wood tones and shades, I just choose something that will compliment. It’s so hard to get them exactly right. The same with cabinet color. You don’t want to match, just compliment. And for us, we’re planning to change our flooring very soon, so I was thinking about that new color, not the current flooring color.

Inside vs. Outside Mount: This is a fun little decision you need to make when purchasing bamboo shades. This is another reason why it took me so long to finally choose my shades. You can choose whether you want your blinds to sit inside the window frame or outside the window frame.

It was a no-brainer in my kitchen area because it would look a little funny to put all of those shades outside the window frame in there. Just too much. Of course with the back door there is no window frame, so I had to choose an outside mount for that.

But then when it came to deciding for my living room, well, it was a little more tricky. If you see the old faux wood blinds, they were hung inside the window frames. Our ceilings in our living room are 11 or 12 feet tall. And so, because I adhere to the “high and wide” method when it comes to hanging curtains, our curtains are so much higher than the tops of the window frames. I’m not sure why the builder didn’t just take the windows all the way up the wall, but he didn’t.

The old blinds mounted inside the window frame.

So, I had to decide if I wanted the new shades to fit like the old blinds or if I wanted to mount them outside of the window frame and up next to the curtains. In the end I decided to hang them high and wide as well.

And when I got the blinds up in the kitchen, I was sooooo thankful I made that decision for the living room. See, the bamboo blinds take up several inches of the top of the window, which is fine. But this way, in the living room, I can pull the shades down to the top of the window frame and it not only makes it look like the window is larger, but it doesn’t block any of the light.

Here’s the deal. I don’t even close the bamboo shades in the living room at night. I just pull the curtains closed and call it a day. They are so long that they are a little heavy, so I don’t want to risk them pulling out of the wall at the top by pulling on them every day. It works for us!

Liner vs. No Liner: In case you didn’t know, bamboo shades are almost completely see through at night. As in someone standing outside your home at night while you have the lights on inside will be able to see what you are doing. That sounds so creepy, and it would be. If you don’t have close neighbors and don’t have a lot of peeping toms 😬, then it shouldn’t be an issue.

But, you can always add a privacy liner to the back of your blinds. Even though our windows are in our backyard, we still have pretty close neighbors that could be able to see in, so I just felt more comfortable adding the privacy liners.

SelectBlinds also has a blackout liner option, which I think would be awesome for a bedroom! I’m thinking about ordering some for both of my girls’ bedrooms.

One downside to the privacy liner is that you don’t get much light coming in when the shades are pulled down. Just wanted you to be aware!

OK, I think that is all of the points you need to know about when it comes to choosing your blinds. Let’s now talk about the pros and (very few) cons of owning bamboo shades.

The Pros and Cons of Choosing Bamboo Shades

Let’s start with the pros because there are quite a few and they far outweigh any cons!

Half up, Half down: One of my favorite features of bamboo shades is that they can be pulled halfway down. Our eat-in kitchen faces east, so the morning sun is bright in there! But I can pull down one blind halfway to block the sun while leaving the others open. It’s so nice for the blocking feature.

Openness: Our old wood slat blinds were broken, so they didn’t pull up. So, they were always down whether the blinds were open or not. Even when they were open and the light was coming through, it still felt like there was a barrier between the backyard and the inside. Now it’s all open! And I love how much larger the room feels with the old blinds gone and the new shades on the windows. We’ve said so many times since we got them that we can’t wait to put them on the rest of the house!

Size: This is going to seem funny, but I love how thin the shades are when they are pulled down. I’m guessing we gained a few inches around the perimeter of our kitchen now that they are installed. I love how much room they leave in a room that already felt small. Now it feels so much bigger even when the shades are closed!

Cordless: This might be my absolute favorite feature! All of the blinds and shades at SelectBlinds.com have a cordless option, which is AWESOME when you have kids. You never have to worry about them hurting themselves in the cords!

On my shades, there’s a little ring on the back at the bottom of the shade and you just use it to pull them up and down. It gives me such a peace of mind that my kiddos aren’t going to get hurt!

Feel & Texture: For me, one of the biggest design reasons for wanting bamboo shades is that it gives the room the so much needed depth and texture to balance out the flooring and all of the white and bright colors. In the same way that a basket or a rug offers another level of interest to the room, the blinds do the same thing. I knew it would complete the look in my eat-in kitchen and living room. And it did exactly that! They are the perfect compliment to the rooms and finish them off!

Cleaning: I’m not a huge fan of cleaning, so I didn’t clean my old wood slat blinds very often. So, that meant they were often dusty. But with bamboo shades, it’s easy to wipe them off with a dusting cloth or dusting wand. And if you lower them daily, it pretty much takes care of itself!

Light filtering: The bamboo shades will allow light to pass through if they don’t have the privacy liner in them. This is great if you want the light to come in, but have some level of privacy. But again, like I said before you won’t get privacy at night without the privacy liners. They are pretty much see through. But the privacy liners don’t allow much light to pass through.

Easy Installation: Y’all. These are seriously the easiest blinds I’ve ever installed! So easy that I thought I’d show you in this short video …

I can’t really think of any cons other than one. And to me it’s not even a big deal, so to me there aren’t any cons, but I thought I’d share this one thing in case it bothers you.

Shedding: My particular blind style {jute wheat} “sheds” some, in that the natural fibers come out. It doesn’t fall out enough to notice on the blinds at ALL, but I just sweep the ones on the floor up when I’m vacuuming or sweeping, which I have to do anyway every night because of my kids. I think the other shades with slats probably don’t shed at all, just the “wheat” ones.

Alrighty. That is a lot of information about bamboo blinds. Hopefully it has been helpful to know about the mounting styles, the liner selections, cordless options and quality you want to have! If you have any questions, please leave me a comment below or e-mail me at Laura @ TheTurquoiseHome . com (no spaces).

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading!! 😊

Laura

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