With a lot of the plantation shutter design advice we impart throughout this website, the right shutter solution for you often comes back to how you have answered Rule 1  - how often do you intend to actually open your shutter panels as opposed to tilting and adjusting the slats.

If you will fold back the shutter panels the majority of the time, having narrower panels hinged to concertina onto each other works best.

However, if you will leave the panels in position and tilt the slats open / closed and angled the majority of the time, we recommend you apply the ‘less is more’ principle. Less panels (ie fewer, wider shutters) creates more light and positive visual impact in the room.

Regardless of the quantity of shutter panels you decide to have, please take a good look at the framing of the window. Let’s say that your window is one whole opening but divides into 3 sections due to the vertical glazing bars. It would look terrible if you installed 4 shutter panels onto this opening. The vertical upright solid sections of the shutters would be totally out of sync with the glazing bars on the window. We would recommend that you have either 3 or 6 panels. Similarly if the window is divided into 2 sections then either 2 or 4 panels would work best.

Proceed to the Shutter Colours advice page.