Hi there.
My name is Nils with LRN2DIY and today we'll be covering five unexpected
benefits of having plantation shutters.
Just a quick disclaimer on this video,
we know that plantation shutters are not something that will be for everyone.
It's just something that can be pretty expensive. But with that in mind,
if you're in the market for plantation shutters, or if you're thinking about it,
hopefully you'll find the content in this video to be helpful.
Now, my wife and I were excited to get plantation shutters for years.
And when we finally got them,
there were a few things that we expected and kind of anticipated that they would
do for us. But there were about five that we just didn't expect. Now,
the first thing we did expect was privacy.
We wanted to be able to close the shutters and make sure that no one could see
in day or night, we had our privacy, and they do that just as expected.
The second thing we wanted them to do was to block light. Generally,
we wanted to make sure that when we close them that it was not so light in the
room and that we could control the sunlight based on those shutters. Now,
the third thing, and this is probably highest on my list was curb appeal.
They look really good. They really can class up any room, any window.
And they look good from the inside as well as from the outside.
And so we love the idea of having these really good looking, classy,
plantation shutters in our home.
Now those are a few things that we did expect from the plantation shutters.
But the first thing that we did not expect was that these would block out so
much more light than the traditional blinds that we'd had before.
We were using the two inch faux wood blinds.
We've had them in this house and in our last house on all the windows and they
do an okay job. And they're pretty basic.
The upgrade to plantation shutters means that you're blocking out way more
light. When you push these things closed,
it gets it just about pitch black in any room, which is awesome.
And on that note, if you do want to make it even darker,
like let's say you have a home theater situation or a room where a baby is
sleeping and you want it all the way black,
these are compatible with blackout blinds that you can put behind,
just like we did in this room.
Another benefit that we discovered is that these actually come with a full
lifetime warranty on the entire setup, which is really awesome.
If you've ever had those blinds where one of the pieces of the blinds gets
knocked out, it kind of gives that missing teeth look from the outside.
It looks really bad. It looks bad from the inside as well.
The strings can get jumbled up. There's all kinds of issues that can happen.
If you go with a company that gives you a lifetime warranty,
then that's something that you never have to worry about again.
Both the tilt rods, the louvers, the casing,
the whole nine yards is totally covered. Now,
the next thing I didn't expect has to do with the real estate value of your
home. So in researching these,
I actually called several real estate agents and got their opinions on does it
matter if you have plantation shutters. On the most conservative side,
what I was told was that it's always going to be a positive leg up as far as the
competition, if you've got plantation shutters and someone else does not,
it's definitely going to be a win for you if you've got that advantage.
And then others that I spoke to said, actually,
you can look at a $4,000 to $6,000 home value increase based on having the
shutters. Not only will it help you sell the house when the time comes,
but it will also help you get more value out of it.
One of the benefits I actually least expected was that these block out a lot of
the sound that's coming from outside your house.
So we live in a place where there's a fairly major road near us,
and then there's the street out front as well.
So a lot of that traffic can come into the house through the windows.
And fortunately with plantation shutters that blocks so much more of that than
we expected, we didn't expect anything, honestly.
If your neighbor is mowing the lawn,
then it will do a great job at helping to muffle that sound,
making it a little bit more of a sanctuary inside the house.
Now I think probably the number one benefit that we see from these that we had
no idea was coming, was thermal insulation. It's the middle of summer right now.
It's 88 degrees outside. And you can see here on this thermal camera,
that the temperature difference between where the blinds are open or the
shutters are open and where they're closed is pretty massive.
You can get several degrees easily. And in some cases,
even up to about 30 degrees, which is a huge energy savings for your home. Now,
plantation shutters aren't necessarily that typical type of content that I have
on my channel here. But a couple of years ago,
when we were looking into getting plantation shutters,
I checked out all kinds of companies. I looked at Blindster, blinds.com,
American Blinds and Sunburst.
And after checking out all four of these companies,
I realized that sunburst had been around for about 40 years.
They had locations in 50 different places in the United States,
they had free and home quotes. They had all this great stuff going for them.
They even had craftsmen style window casings,
which none of the other companies offered.
So I thought they were probably the best company to go with.
So I reached out proactively to them,
ask them if I could make a video with them.
And they actually agreed to sponsor this video by giving me free covering for
five of my windows, which was awesome. But the fact is,
and this is important for you to know, after we got those five free ones,
we liked them so much and saw such a difference in those areas that we went
ahead and paid out of pocket for the whole rest of the windows in our house.
We just love what they do for the rooms and they look great and I definitely
would recommend them. Now, definitely do your research,
take a look around and see what's the best value for you.
But if you end up wanting to go with Sunburst,
you can head over to sunburstshutters.com and you can get your order started.
Now,
plantation shutters can work wonders for privacy and light and the look of your
windows. But if you've got hard water stains,
like I've had on the outside of your windows from sprinklers and secondary
water,
then I've got a really cool trick that will help you to get that off quickly and
easily. And you can check that out in the video right here.
My name is Nils with LRN2DIY. Thanks for watching,
and we'll see you on the next one.