Home Savings 101 – Cutting Winter Energy Bills with Window Treatments
If your house is so cold you are afraid to get out of your Snuggie but don’t want to turn up your heat for fear of raising an already hefty energy bill even higher, replacing your window treatments may very well be the answer to taking that chill out of the room.
If you are selling – or preparing to sell your Waterloo Region home maintaining a warm, welcoming home is doubly important, and the investment in new window treatments may be one well worth making for aesthetic purposes as well.
Top Energy Saving Window Treatment Tips
Window treatments can play a surprisingly large part in the fight to keep your winter energy bills down. For instance, a well fitting pair of curtains can help reduce energy loss in a room by as much as 10%. By well fitting we mean draperies that are hung as close to the window as possible and reach either a window sill or the floor.
For the absolute maximum effectiveness, you should buy and install a cornice at the top of a drapery or place the drapery against the ceiling. Then seal the curtain at both sides and overlap it in the center. You can use Velcro or magnetic tape to attach drapes to the wall at the sides and bottom. If you follow these steps for the duration of the winter months, you may reduce heat loss in a room by up to 25%.
If shades are more to your liking the good news is that when properly installed all different kinds of shades do a fantastic job of holding the heat in and keeping the cold winds out. Roman shades are particularly effective as they usually consist of several layers of fiber batting and have tightly sealed edges.
If you really want to go with the concept of saving energy with window treatments though, there is one kind of shade on the market these days that have actually been proven to reduce energy loss from the average sized living room by up to 50%–honeycomb shades.
Honeycomb shades have (not too surprising, given the name) a special honeycomb within a honeycomb texture, that repels heat back into a room while keeping cold air out.
Whatever kind of new window treatments you eventually opt for the best energy savings all of them should be drawn or closed as soon as darkness falls. In rooms that get little in the way of direct sunlight during the day – or on very miserable, cloud-filled days – they should actually remain closed as much as possible for maximum energy savings and comfort.