And January continues. The Polar Vortex threat is past, at least for now, but we are in the heart of the cold weather season, and everyone has a favorite way of staying warm. Sometimes you reach for a cozy blanket to settle down and read, or watch a movie, but if you want to keep your whole house uniformly warm, you turn up the heat. Windows are so often a problem, even when they’re not old, and one way you can keep your house warmer without touching the thermostat is to add another layer of insulation inside the window.
Duette Honeycomb Shades: a blanket for your windows
Duette® honeycomb window shades keep things warmer just like your blanket does, with little pockets of air. Hunter Douglas designed this beautiful little pillow of air as a honeycomb, because it stacks nicely when you raise the shade, but opens up when the shade is lowered. The insulating air pocket that results provides another line of defense against the cold… the air inside doesn’t conduct heat very efficiently, and the tiny space doesn’t allow for air to move around either, limiting the transfer of heat even more. I don’t need to say that the less heat you lose, the less you need pay for, do I?
Duette Architella Shades for maximum energy efficiency
Hunter Douglas has taken this concept even farther with Architella, the most energy efficient version of Duettes. Duette Architella has a double honeycomb… yes! A honeycomb inside another honeycomb, creating nested air pockets. If you look at them from the side, you’ll see that this actually creates 3 separate chambers of air, and they can actually reduce heat loss by up to 50% with the right fabrics and accessories. Hunter Douglas uses these infrared photos to show the heat loss of a home at the windows, with no window treatments on the left side, and with Duette Architella on the right side. You can see the difference with your own eyes.
You can have your cake and eat it too! Design, in this case…
Now, lest you think that I am ruled by efficiency and function at the expense of design, this is where I need to make a point. I LOVE Duette honeycomb shades, first and foremost, because they are simply GORGEOUS window treatments. They have both clean lines and softness, and the horizontal vanes lend a serene, zenlike effect. But the very top of my list of what I love about Duettes is the play of light through the translucent fabrics, and the water-color-y effect you get from varying levels of stacked vanes and light passing through. Hands down, the most gorgeous of translucent window covering products, in my not-so-humble opinion.
That’s what makes the energy efficiency part so amazing… whether you buy Duettes for the style and beauty, or for the energy efficiency, you get the other quality too. It’s too much to be just a bonus… it’s really living in the best of both worlds.
