Inside Mount or Outside Mount for my Window Blinds?
Window blinds and shades are good for many things. Blinds and shades provide privacy, darken a room, and add decorating value. There are many things to consider when shopping for your window coverings, such as window blinds or window shades, and do you go with room darkening or light filtering. Choosing the mount position is also really important, but rarely is it that a blinds and shade company educates window covering customers about it. Let me change that right now.
Inside mounted blinds and shades will give you the cleanest look. That is because they fit inside the window frame, and can be mounted as deep or as shallow as you like. Outside mounted blinds and shades give the flexibility of choosing almost any window covering for any situation. That is simply because the window frame doesn’t matter. You just mount the brackets outside of the window frame and hang your blinds or shades so they extend past the frame.
Door blinds are a great example of when outside mount blinds and shades are the right solution. The reason being is that almost every French door has a very shallow window frame, making it nearly impossible to correctly install inside mount brackets upon which hang the window coverings. Outside mount brackets need worry about that, not at all. It is a good idea for a door blind to be a 1” real wood blind, 1” Faux Wood Blind, or a 3/8” single cell honeycomb shade. The thinner window coverings act as a décor complement, and not an overbearing utilitarian light control and privacy device, which is how a bigger blind, like a 2” basswood blind would look. French doors are just one example of when to choose outside mount. Any window in a shallow frame is a good candidate for an outside mount. The brackets for the outside mount blinds and shades can be installed on the window frame, on the wall outside of the window frame, or on the ceiling, above the window frame.
Inside mount blinds and shades are installed with the brackets attached to the inside of the window frame, and depending on the bracket, they can be placed almost anywhere on the top, or the corner of the inside window frame. Accurately measuring your windows is important for either outside or inside mount, with the difference being that with the inside mount, the room for error is minuscule.
Both inside mount and outside mount will let a tiny sliver of light in, which is a byproduct of the space between the window blind or window shade, and the window frame. Blinds and shades made to measure, based on your accurate measurements, will make it almost undetectable.