Can You Have Gorgeous Bare-Look Windows AND Privacy? YES!!

I came across the image below the other day and fell instantly and madly in love. I knew I had to share it with you right away, particularly because we've been talking about window treatments. Isn't the room gorgeous? It's hard to know where to begin in highlighting the feature I like best.

Should it be the wispily soft gentle grey-green of the walls, which is dark enough to provide contrast with the white woodwork but not so dark that the warm effect of the timber is lost? {Try Farrow and Ball's Pigeon for a similar effect.} Might it be the rich brown of the curved chest of drawers? The soft light filtering through the wooden Venetian blind? Or the brickwork in the fireplace left raw, providing lovely contrast with the sparkle of the mirror above? 

A perfectly Modern Country room in every way, don't you agree? Ooh, simply scrumptious.

Now, in the last post, we were talking about leaving windows untreated. Most of us agreed in the comments section that there is a time and a place for leaving windows bare. The window needs to be particularly gorgeous, the view to-die-for and the room needs a strong industrial feel.

But even if all these heavenly ingredients are in place, there will still be times when a little bit of privacy is called for. Curtains seem wrong, wrong, wrong in some spaces - too fussy, somehow, and too attention-grabbing. We need an option that is eye-candy perfect but subtly and stealthily so. And that is where wooden Venetian blinds step into the limelight. These don't have to be hugely expensive (in fact, after a quick snoop, I've just spotted that Blinds Supermarket currently have 80% off their bespoke range).

Simple, beautiful and low-key when pulled down, and, when raised, wooden Venetian blinds disappear into thin air.

Letting your lovely room sing for itself.

{Cue angelic choirs.}