Privacy

Privacy on a street where the pavement is two metres away

Most privacy problems are geometric. People walking past look horizontally, so you only need to block the lower half of the window, and blocking the whole thing is why so many front rooms feel like caves.

Split the window and you keep the sky, which is where the useful daylight comes from anyway.

Privacy: Privacy on a street where the pavement is two metres away in an East Kent home, fitted by Homestyle Blinds & Shutters

Cafe style shutters

Panels on the bottom half only, open glass above. This is the classic answer for Victorian and Edwardian terraces in Folkestone, Hythe and Ashford, and it is also the cheapest shutter configuration because you are dressing half the opening.

  • Cafe style shutters: lower half covered, upper half clear.
  • Tier on tier: same effect but with the option to close the top at night.
  • Top down bottom up blinds: raise from the sill rather than lowering from the head.
  • Screen fabrics: see out during daylight, obscure from the street.

How screen fabrics behave after dark

Daylight privacy and night time privacy are different problems. Screen fabric reverses once your lights are on and the street is dark, so in a bedroom or a front lounge we pair it with a second layer or specify a tier on tier shutter instead.

Bathrooms and side returns

For an overlooked bathroom, a tilting louvre above a solid lower panel gives you total cover at eye height and full daylight above it, with no frosted film needed on the glass.

Privacy - your questions

Yes, once your interior lights are on. That is physics rather than fabric quality, so we recommend a second layer in rooms used after dark.

For daytime privacy it is ideal. If you want the room closed at night as well, tier on tier gives you both in one frame.

A little, because the mechanism is more complex, and they are worth it on an overlooked window where you want to keep the view of the sky.

Not if the upper half stays clear. That is the whole point of splitting the window rather than covering it.

Solve the overlooking problem properly

We will stand where the passer by stands, work out exactly what needs covering, and quote only that.