Parkland® Wood Blinds for Sonoma County Homes

What you are paying for with a real-wood blind is the material itself. Basswood is light for its stiffness, which keeps a wide blind from feeling heavy on the pull and lets the slats stack tightly when raised. A stain leaves the grain visible and shifts with the light through the day the way a wood floor does; a solid paint gives you a cleaner, more architectural line and is the easier match to painted trim. Slat width changes the character as much as the finish does. The 2-inch slat reads as more detailed and suits smaller openings and traditional casings, while the 2.5-inch slat draws fewer horizontal lines across a large window and opens to a wider view when tilted.

Real wood belongs in the rooms that stay dry: living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and studies, where the material is part of the decision and the air is stable. It does not belong above a kitchen sink, in a bathroom or in a laundry room. A solid slat in those rooms cups and stops closing evenly within a couple of seasons, so the wet rooms get EverWood instead, where the engineered slat takes the same stains and paints and reads the same from across a room. Running Parkland through the dry rooms and EverWood everywhere moisture is a factor is a normal way to do a whole house. Keeping the slat width and the finish coordinated between the two is what makes it read as one job rather than two.

The optional details do a lot of the work on a wood blind. Decorative cloth tapes cover the route holes and carry a band of color or pattern down the face, and a decorative cornice finishes the head of the window where a plain valance would fall flat. Specialty shapes are available for openings that are not simple rectangles. Hunter Douglas also makes a donation to the Arbor Day Foundation on every Parkland purchase, toward its tree and rainforest preservation work.