I just love when a room pulls together for the whole family. In my case, that means my husband and I, and our cats. When designing for clients I try to share stories about my interiors, and talk about how we’ve come to create a home out of walls, paint, and furniture. It’s my hope that in doing so, it will inspire creativity in their process.
One thing my family loves is sitting at a table in front of our patio door on Sunday mornings. It’s just a beautiful space to enjoy spending time together, do crosswords, and plan our week ahead. The only problem we’d ever faced in that space was the strong southeast sun that would shine in our eyes!
When we installed Hunter Douglas Duette Honeycomb Shades with top-down bottom-up on our windows, it created a whole new atmosphere for our Sunday sittings, with a funny little addition I’ll reveal in a moment. We included the LiteRise® system, making the shades completely cordless-you just open them by pushing them with your finger. You would never think when they were installed, that these sturdy shades would be transformed to be light-as-air, but that’s exactly what the LiteRise® system does!
The top-down bottom-up feature on our Duette Honeycomb Shades paired with LiteRise allowed us to scrunch the shadings to block only the part of the window where the sun shone through the strongest. We got to stay seated at our table a little longer, and our cats could still peek out the bottom of the window at the birds and squirrels. Don’t you just love Sunday mornings?
When clients, and guests at our home, ask where the cords, twists and mechanisms are on our Duette shades and other LiteRise window treatments, I have to laugh. We don’t have anything separating us from the beauty of the shades, or the outdoors.
Here’s the funny little bonus feature:
There was one day when we searched high and low for our cat Lucy. We were convinced we had lost her, we even called her name outside in hopes that she would return. We looked everywhere and then, suddenly, we saw a tiny paw peeking from beneath the shades! Lucy had figured out how to create her own sanctuary in our favorite space, by lifting, and lowering, the shades!
It just goes to show how durable and user-friendly this system is. Lucy has stepped away from the family for her own quiet times on numerous occasions, and nothing has broken yet! Here’s to human appreciated and cat approved window treatments
