How to save up to 40 per cent on your energy bills with the right window coverings

How will you be heating your home this winter? Will it be in an environmentally responsible manner or will you be burning fossil fuels or racking up the kW on your meter? You can save a considerable sum of money on your energy bills. Recent New Zealand studies have shown that we spend up to 40 per cent of our energy bills on heating and cooling the home. That is money literally going out the window as Veronica Strachan from Curtain Connections explains.

So here is where curtains do their best work. You can literally trap the air between the glass window and the back of a curtain to prevent it escaping into the room. The curtain by all accounts and purposes should be fully lined in a block out, on a sturdy track with returns back to the wall and ideally with a pelmet across the top to stop the air from escaping upwards. An experiment proved how window coverings could help reduce your energy bill. The outside temperature was 30 degrees. Immediately inside the window the temperature registered was 38 degrees, but on the other side of the curtain – that is in the room – the temperature was a lovely 25 degrees!

Consider Fully Lined Curtains with Sustainable Material

Once you purchase the correct draperies for your home and see it as an investment, they pay for themselves in less than five years. It is important to mention here that you need to be installing the correct window coverings to obtain such great results. Roller blinds, venetians and verticals don’t go anywhere near this result due to inherent gaps that allow heat or cold to penetrate or creep around the edges. Many people are told about ‘block out’ qualities of blinds, but are not made aware of these gaps that are simply inherent in the design. Plantation shutters are considerably better as they sit within a frame, but they still have horizontal gaps. Fully lined curtains are without question the best option to significantly reduce your energy consumption.

How does all this fit into sustainability? Simple really. The operation of window coverings generally requires no energy (except for motorisation). This in itself reduces your carbon footprint. Air conditioning and other heating devices do not have to go flat out to maintain the ambient temperature of the room – another significant reduction in your carbon footprint. Team this idea with environmentally responsible fabrics and materials and you have a perfect sustainable solution to heating and cooling your home with minimum impact on the environment.

Veronica Strachan www.curtainconnections.com.au