Shutters and curtains are often treated as an either-or decision, and they should not be. Layered properly, plantation shutters give you the light control and curtains give you the softness and the acoustic warmth that a hard window furnishing cannot. Layered badly, the window looks cluttered and the curtains foul on the shutter frame every time you draw them. The difference comes down to a few decisions made before anything is ordered.
Shutters do the functional work. They control light, privacy and heat, and they do it better than fabric. What they do not do is absorb sound or soften a room’s edges, which is why a house with shutters throughout and nothing else can feel hard and echoey, particularly in newer homes with high ceilings and tiled floors.
Curtains fix that. Used as a decorative frame rather than a functional cover, they add texture and warmth without you ever needing to close them.
Sheers are almost always the answer here. A floor to ceiling sheer either side of a shuttered window softens the frame while leaving the shutter fully operable. Because you are not relying on the curtain for privacy, you can choose fabric purely on how it drapes. Our Sheer Elegance range works well in this role.
This is the one case for a functional curtain over shutters. A blockout curtain over a shuttered window gives you genuine full darkness, which shutters alone will not, since light always creeps through the louvre gaps. Worth doing in main bedrooms and nurseries. There is more on why in our post on how much light shutters block out.
Heavier drapes suit here, where you want the room to feel finished rather than practical. Pinch pleat or wave fold on a decorative track sitting well above and wide of the shutter frame.
The trickiest pairing, because a swinging shutter panel and a curtain compete for the same space. A vertical sheer such as the Allure Breeze is often the better answer here, since it does the job of both. We look at the wider options in the best solutions for covering sliding doors.
This is where most pairings go wrong. The curtain track needs to clear the shutter frame entirely, both in projection and in width.
Mount the track to the ceiling or as high on the wall as the cornice allows, and extend it at least 200mm past the shutter frame on each side. That gives the curtain somewhere to stack when open, so it sits against the wall rather than across the glass. Get this wrong and you lose light, and the curtain rubs the frame every time it moves.
For floor to ceiling looks, the curtain should finish just clear of the floor, not pooled, when it is sitting alongside a shutter.
Keep the shutter as the constant and let the curtain carry the colour. White or off-white shutters, which are what most homes across Macarthur and the Illawarra choose, will sit with almost any curtain tone. Our post on why white shutters remain the most popular choice explains why that pairing is so forgiving.
Match undertones rather than exact colours. A cool white shutter next to a warm cream curtain reads as a mismatch rather than a layer. If you are choosing both at once, bring the shutter sample to the fabric selection rather than the other way around, since the shutter range is narrower.
Functionally, no. Acoustically and visually, most rooms benefit, particularly living areas with hard floors.
Not when the curtain is a sheer used as a frame. The dated look comes from heavy drapes fully covering a shuttered window.
Usually yes, as long as there is enough wall or ceiling above the frame. We can assess this on a site measure.
Shutters, then curtains. The shutter frame determines where the track can go, not the reverse.
Yes. The pairing rules are the same across the basswood, wildwood and polymer ranges.
We make both, so we can measure and quote them together and make sure the track and frame work with each other. See our shutters and curtains ranges, visit our Smeaton Grange showroom, or contact us for a free measure and quote.