Exterior House Shutters

There’s a lot more to exterior house shutters than you might think. My experience has been in drawing them to fit the houses they’re designed for and physically working with them on DIY projects. Painting them and screwing them to the house.

Florida and other hurricane states often use functional shutters that fit the windows for protection (code)…so it’s not always just about appearance.

I think shutters should look like they’re functional even when they’re not. Too many are added just for decoration.

Before you buy shutters you might want to do some measuring. The height of the window is the easy dimension to come up with. It’s the width that I see on a lot of shutters that isn’t quite right.

I have to confess I have a pet peeve about shutters. Is it just me or have you noticed it too? Most shutters are to narrow for the windows they’re on…it’s a matter of scale.

Here are pictures of the same window with different size shutters. I made a photoshop version to illustrate what I’m talking about. Which do you think looks better? The larger shutters on the right are the real thing.

I took this picture as we drove by. We were on vacation in Brazil visiting family friends and I had the camera ready.

The colors are what caught my eye at the time, but for the purpose of this subject I thought it would be an interesting picture. It shows functional shutters.

If you like the more authentic look and are willing to spend a little more…you can add hardware to make them functional or at least look like they are.

The reason for going with the non-functional shutter is cost. Generally they are less expensive than functional shutters.

I know I’ve just scratched the surface on this subject. To learn more about shutters a good site to check out is AllAboutShutters.com