Whenever the division of a room is desired, it has been traditionally achieved by the erection of a permanent wall which usually requires the hiring of a qualified person to construct said wall, high costs of material and labor, issuance of building permits by a governmental department and major disruptions during the building process. With the advent and popularity of vertical blinds, the desired result can be easily achieved at a much lower cost, much less hassle and moreover, as a by-product of the decision to use vertical blinds as room dividers, the option of fully opening the vertical blind reverts the room in question to its original "wide open space" design. Civic organizations, such as churches and government buildings, will have large meeting rooms where gatherings of all sizes will take place and where different functions could potentially be taking place simultaneously. These frequent occurrences require the flexibility to tailor the available physical space to meet specific needs. Oftentimes vertical blinds can provide the choice way to achieve these needs without the installation of expensive room dividers which occupy a large space whenever not in use and are aesthetically unacceptable. Vertical blinds provide the ability to retract in any direction ? left, right, center opening and center stacking.
Vertical blinds also offer the ability to be made as a pair of tracks and then be made into center open to be able to cover a much wider space. A standard folding door may be limited to twelve feet. On the other hand, a vertical blind is limited to 16 feet wide. Therefore, two vertical blinds can be butted together to make for as big as thirty-two feet of space coverage. If vertical blinds can be big enough to cover that wide of a space, then they are large enough to divide most any room.
Consideration should be given to the fact that vertical blinds operate independently and as a single unit and whenever vertical blinds are "butted" together, controls at the end of each vertical blind will operate each blind independently of one another. Due to the simplicity of operation, dealing with two independent controls is not a hindrance but is actually an advantage for you can retrieve only one of the vertical blinds should that be physically necessary. As previously mentioned, the use of "butted" vertical blinds may actually be more desirable due to the ability to independently adjust the size of the desired opening and the additional savings realized whenever smaller blinds are shipped. Large items are always more expensive to ship because they require the services of a common carrier versus the relatively inexpensive method of shipping via UPS or FedEx. However, when compared to the cost of building a permanent wall, these costs are usually insignificant. Child safety has been an increasing concern with window treatments.
This issue remains a concern when using blinds as a room divider. For this reason, you must always ensure that your control cords and your rotate chains are on the ends of the tracks, and are attached to a will in a fashion to ensure that the vertical blinds are safely installed and not likely to hurt any itinerate children who may be fascinated by these elements of the vertical blinds. Another installation issue with this application for vertical blinds. Many large spaces may have excessively high ceilings, or the ceilings may, in fact, be shaped to not accommodate a vertical blind track. For these situations, one should consider installing a hanging strip first. This is a long and straight pice of wood, or metal if preferred, and then the vertical blind track would be installed onto this track.
For the goal of noise control, while there is little that can be done to eliminate the noise of the rooms, it is recommended that one use fabric vertical blinds to try to minimize noise. This is principally because the PVC from blinds will often tap into the other pieces, and make a constant drone of tapping. On the other hand, the fabric will not be noisy when it touches.
When selecting vertical blinds as room dividers, you should also consider how the control system will appear to occupants. A good supplier can also provide a double valance. This valance is not the typical cover.
On the contrary, this special double valance would be two valances, one to cover the front of the track, and one to cover the back of the vertical blind track. This has the benefit of a greater uniform and finer presentation for the blinds.
Judith Persit works from home in a design studio and writes about bamboo shades. Learn aboutshades at her website.
