Door blinds: how to choose and install

Due to non-standard appearance, blinds today are used not only as sun protection on the windows, but also decorate doorways and interior partitions with them. Moreover, it can be not only door blinds in the form of a curtain for an aperture, assembled from fabric slats or aluminum plates that you see in the photo.

In the style of blinds can be made and interior door leaf, as well as the doors wardrobe, kitchen, and other cabinets. After watching the video in this article, and reading the material presented in it, you will not only learn what types of these accessories the retail chain offers to the domestic consumer, but you will see how you can create an original and harmonious interior with their help.

Louvre doors

Increasingly, blinds are a full, and sometimes even the main element of the interior. If earlier it was mainly a prerogative for offices, then today this accessory perfectly fit into residential premises.

There are many variations of door blinds. They can be hung on the door, used instead of the door - or, in the form of blinds, the door leaf can be made.

So:

• This can be a regular hinged or folding door, in the center of which, instead of a deaf panel (see Panel of the door: how to manufacture and install) or glass, frames with transverse slats are inserted. They are located at a certain, strictly fixed angle, and are called "unregulated blinds." Made in this style of doors, screens and partitions, look great kitchens, bathrooms (meaning interior furniture), bedrooms, as well as in large rooms that need to be divided into several zones.

• The main advantage of these doors is their ability to pass light, which is important for partitions and panoramic openings, as well as air, which is very important for wardrobes with clothes and other things. And sometimes other quality can be valuable.

Note! The door of the louvered type makes it possible to view the room on the one hand, limiting visibility on the other. In office premises, these are executive offices, which, while remaining invisible, can observe the work of subordinates. In the house, such a door can be installed in the nursery, through which parents will be able to look after the child.

• Louvre doors can be made of wood, plastic, aluminum, and differ only in the structure of the blinds themselves. They can be fixed, that is, fixed - and in this case they do not give a good overview. Basically, these models perform a decorative function, as well as contribute to the improvement of ventilation or insolation of the room.

But movable blinds can be considered versatile, as adjustable lamellae allow to measure the amount of transmitted light at their discretion, and, if necessary, change the viewing angle. Naturally, by virtue of a more complex mechanism, the price of such doors is much higher. In order to save money, people more often prefer ordinary glass doors with hinged blinds.

Horizontal and vertical lamellas

The spatial position of the slats is one of the classification signs of blinds. This also applies to door blocks and hinged accessories. In blocks, the direction of the slats is usually horizontal, which makes it possible to provide the best overview.

• If there are adjustable lamellas, they can be configured so that everything will be visible not only in a straight line, but you also get a panoramic view. Vertically made blinds close the side view, and behind them you can see only a certain part of the room, located on the other side.

• By the way, they often mean doors-accordions, the canvas of which consists of several narrow sectional elements. But they have nothing to do with blinds. In their structure, folding doors only remind of blinds, but they do not possess their advantages mentioned above.
• Their main positive quality is the compactness of the canvas, which does not take up space in the room when opened. Well, the aesthetics of such doors are also high - although everything depends on the model and manufacturer. Plastic options often differ not only cheap, but also extremely low quality.
• Adjustable slats can be seen mainly on aluminum and metal-plastic doors, interior partitions. In wooden canvases, they are often motionless, and are located only horizontally. If desired, each owner can make a lattice insert for an old door with his own hands, and install it instead of glass - although this is not as easy as it might initially seem.

• There is a video instruction on this topic on the Internet, and whether you can repeat what a professional carpenter shows depends on the availability of the necessary tool and skills to work with it. To simplify your task and not to make your own strips, you can disassemble adjustable wooden blinds, and use them to insert into the door leaf.
• To do this, from the inner ends of the racks of the cloth need to remove the quarters, which was installed glass. Then you have to mirror two slats with inclined grooves in mirror image, glue them on the sides, and mount lamellas on them. Alternatively, you can assemble, as shown in the picture above, a solid insert, and install it on a previously prepared canvas - or make a door in the form of such a frame.

Horizontal blinds are the most common option - at least when it comes to door leaf with louvre inserts.

As for vertical blinds, they can often be found in the form of a hinged structure, and they perfectly fulfill the role of a decorative accessory in the interior. With their help, you can also change the proportions of the room visually - for example: to raise the ceiling too low.

Principle of production of adjustable blinds

If aluminum blinds in apartments are used exclusively for sun protection, that is, they are hung on windows and balcony frames, then wooden blinds are a great option for doorways and panoramic partitions that will perfectly fit into any interior. In addition, it is a natural material with an interesting texture, perfectly combined with almost all types of finishing materials and furniture.

So:

• For the manufacture of wooden lamellas, they mainly use linden, as it has a small volumetric weight and gives a uniform color when opening the surface with a stain. Usually, wooden louver plates have a width of 5 cm. In the production, tree trunks that are similar in size are selected, from which a piece of a given section is cut by cutting off all the excess.

• To get the slats, it is passed through a machine equipped for cutting thin strips. From one bar can get up to fifteen plates 4 mm thick. The next stage is the polishing of the surface of the slats of future blinds, which is also performed by a special machine. So the tree is prepared for staining.
• Then, spray plates are coated with a tinting compound, over which a primer varnish is applied to fix the shade. After it dries, the plates are ground again, but now by hand, which is a preparatory operation before applying the last layer, which is a protective varnish.
• When the surface of the plates is perfected, oblong holes are made on them, at a distance of 15 cm from each end, through which the cord fixing them in the desired position is passed. Changing the angle of position of the lamellae is carried out with the help of a rotary rod, which is connected to the construction as a last resort.

As you can see, the plate manufacturing technology is rather complicated, and it is not so easy to make them yourself to insert into the door leaf. That is why, in order to make a louvered door, it is easier to disassemble small window blinds, and cut them into pieces of the desired length.

You just need to cut the rail with the grooves, glue in the frame, and insert into it the finished slats. Aluminum blinds are made on the same principle - only instead of wooden slats they use thin metal plates.