Hey guys, it's Rebecca with Customer Service and I'm here with Tamra,
my awesome co-worker!
Hello
She's been here a little over a year, and she's really awesome at what she does.
She makes personal connections every day with our customers,
and she's super knowledgeable, so I thought together we could answer
some of the questions that you guys send us on our website.
So one question I get a lot is
"What is the difference between Opposite and One-Way stack on our vertical blinds?"
I actually have an example here. I'll be Vanna White
while Tamara walks us through it.
Okay, I will explain it to you a bit, It can be kind of confusing
especially on the website pictures can be awkward so what you want look for is
basically where you are control whether it be a chain and cord or a wand is
with your actual slats. So if you have your chain and cord over here but whenever
it is open, the chain is on this side and these open this way it's going to be an
Opposite Stack so if it's going to be something like this all together ending up on the same side
that is a One-Way. Just remember the best way is to look at it when it's open - where is your chain.
So another question that we have is about soundproofing rooms. People may be
in apartment complexes or maybe maybe a movie room.
Do double cell or triple cell shades block "more" or "less" sound? What do you think?
No they don't really block a lot of sound. To be really technical we were
talking about this before, if you were to line up every product we have, yes they are
going to block more sound than other things we have, but that is not their purpose,
so if you get them hoping you were "soundproofing" this room because
you have a triple cell, or something like that, you may be a little disappointed because
you're still going to be able to hear things, you know you thought they were
going to block. I wouldn't go with a cellular shade for the simple fact that they would block sound.
No, but you could add, potentially insulated drapes because they come with a foam backing and actually
that would dampen the noise a little bit. So if you were to pair double or triple cell shades together
with some of our insulating draperies that probably would give you a little
bit more of a noise eliminating factor than just shades themselves.
Okay, so we have a customer who says I need to install blinds on my back door
How do I keep them from swaying back and forth when we open and close the door?
Which is a great question.
Yes, that is a good question. I have a customer who
actually called recently, and they were in a wind storm and the blinds were not secured to the bottom
and they got ripped completely off the brackets. Oh my gosh! Yeah it was terrible.
So we got him set up with some with some tie downs.
So you do have options you can do tie-downs and some
manufacturers will actually send velcro, so depending on how windy of an area you live in,
you want to really put that into play as far as choosing that option.
Talk with the design consultant if you are unsure of what you will need
because typically once a shape is ordered you cannot add tie-downs after
the fact because it is actually manufactured into that bottom rail.
Little bungee cords, that kind of thing so, if you are unsure of you know
what strength you'll need just contact us and we'll let you know. That's a great point
so the tie downs are really good for outdoor shades, those will install into
the ground or into the base of your post. We also have for inside doors like if
you've got like a back patio door with a window on it, they're called "hold down" brackets
and again, they're similar to tie-downs in that you
need to make sure you order them when you are ordering your product because
I don't know if you can see this here, but these will install into your wall - here with this screw hole -
and then they'll actually put pins on the ends of your bottom rail for
your blinds and those will just clip right in to your hold downs.
Then it won't move, or it will stay pretty stationary, so there you have it - tie downs and hold down brackets.
Another really common question is "What's the difference between Room Darkening and Blackout fabric?"
If you've got a nursery maybe, or you're sleeping during the day because you have a night shift
maybe you need to blackout, so what do you think?
Well Room Darkening and Blackout can be kind of tricky.
Because a lot of times people will think Room Darkening, it looks the same so it's probably the same but it's not.
So Room Darkening is going to block out about 95% of that light so we have got 5% coming back in
and then the Blackout is going to be 100% and is going to block out all of that light.
Now keep in mind also, if you are wanting to go with a Blackout product whatever it is,
the best thing would probably be if you have the available mounting surface to go with an Outside Mount.
Go a little bit wider, maybe two inches on each side if you have that available space,
because you are going to have deductions taken on an Inside Mount,
so although that fabric itself is going to block that light,
you're going to have light coming through where the deductions were taken.
That's a great point, we will in the next coming weeks talk to you guys a little bit more
about light gaps and deductions and how you can really achieve the total Blackout look.
In our last segment last week we had a customer ask "How you clean Blinds?"
and it's a really frequent question, everybody wants to
make sure their blinds are spic and span, and we have a really awesome tool that's
that's called the EZ Clean Duster,
and it actually has these little pockets so you can just stick it right on your blinds
and swipe it across it will eliminate, it'll just take out the dust and debris
You can also go to our website and the Finishing Touch blog,
and you can find that at blog.blinds.com and our awesome Abigail has
a super awesome series on how to clean your blinds. And that'll let you know
how to clean your solar shades, cellular shades, faux wood blinds.
I highly recommend this it's about $15 on our website.
We'll post a link in our comments
I'm looking forward to all of your questions that we have this week,
so we'll see you again next week!