Deciding on interior wood shutters for your home is a great potential home improvement project. Interior shutters offer an elegance that cannot be matched by any other type of window treatment such as blinds or draperies.
If you choose a quality shutter company, then they will usually send an experienced professional out to your home to measure the window opening to ensure a perfect fit. However, if you’re going to try and save money, you will need to measure the window size yourself.
There are several different types of windows (and measurements) that you will need to take into consideration. First, determine whether you are going to be placing interior shutters on traditional style windows, such as casement or double hung. If you are going to be purchasing shutters for bay or bow windows, there are several different styles of those and measurement gets intensely complicated. You may have a three section bay, curved bay or box bay. You may also have a bow window.
For the purposes of this article, we are going to discuss measurement of a general double hung window.
Next, you will need to determine whether your window frame has the space for an inside mount. That is the ideal mounting position, but not all windows can accommodate an inside mount. Make sure that you have the clearance for an inside mounted shutter.
In order to determine this, you need to know what type of shutter you’re going to install over those windows. Plantation shutters are generally thicker than smaller slat shutters and will often need more clearance space.
If you can install the shutters using an inside mount, then measure the space between the inside edge of the window frame on the top, middle, and bottom. Measure twice to ensure accuracy. Keep in mind that the older windows are, the more likely you may end up with different measurements.
Then measure from the top edge to the sill, again measure three positions (right, center, and left). The size of the shutters should fit comfortably in this space, taking into account the style of hardware that you select for them.
