How Can I Choose the Best Drapes for My Home?

As we continually hear in the news, our planet is getting closer and closer to the breaking point and it will all come down to our ability to change our current ways of living to be more environmentally friendly. There will be some struggles involved, but it is also a great opportunity to look at the little things that we can do to make a big change. Some of those little things can be done in your own home. The first that comes to mind is around energy savings.

hunter douglas shadesEveryone has seen the CFL bulbs that are shaped a little differently than many of the incandescent bulbs we are used to. Those bulbs actually make a huge difference and can save about one hundred dollars over the course of their lifetime. That may not seem like a lot when you think about a single light lasting for about ten years, but when you add that to all of the bulbs in your house, about thirty of them possibly, there is a good chance that you could be saving yourself some serious money in the short and long term if you just start to replace those bulbs now. The other thing to keep in mind when we are talking about energy efficiency is that a lot of heat is let in during the summer and out during the winter through windows. Not all windows are perfect, even the double paned ones, so it is important to have a strategy with how to utilize your blinds and shades. What I try to do during the winter is keep the shades open during the day, so the sun can get in and warm the place up, but close them at night. This keeps the room warmer because the residual heat actually makes a big difference. One thing that you could also do is add some drapes for really cold days. Drapes are an excellent way of keeping all of the cold from the windows out. You can actually feel a huge difference if you have the drapes in place or not.

A final thing to consider is the type of blinds that you purchase. Hunter Douglas makes some great blinds that are coated to keep them more energy efficient than some of their immediate competitors. Utilizing those blinds are a great idea to make sure that all of your heat stays centralized in one place. It allows for minimal heat transfer between the outside and your room and that is critical to making sure that your house is energy efficient. Some other things that you can do around the house are turn off lights when you are not using them, plant trees on the east, south, and west sides of the house to provide shade in the summer and sun in the winter, and finally minimize your water usage by taking shorter showers. There are a number of things that you can look up online, but for right now these are some great tips to get going on.