PATTERNS OF WINDOW COVERINGS FASCINATE HONEYMOONERS

Tom and Linda had decided to spend their honeymoon in New York – their new house in a Midwestern town was comfortable and definitely homey, but they were wanting to acquire a smattering of city sophistication as they began life together. They planned trips to the Metropolitan opera, some art galleries, even some small ones in Greenwich Village. But for their first full evening in town they decided to go for a stroll down a street at the residential area. “Just to see how the natives live in this concrete jungle!” Tom joked. It had been an October wedding and it was already getting dark. Linda went to the window to close the window covering before leaving. “Wow! These are not just plain old roller shades,” she shrieked,”Look at the fabric of these shades! It’s soft and elegant looking! These roller shades are remote controlled, too, just watch this!” She retried a small remote control and demonstrated.

“OK, OK – let’s get outa here and see how the city folks live!” Tom was getting impatient. The taxi dropped them off in what the driver told them was a typical middle class residential area, not without warning them to hang on to their wallets. All of a sudden these two children of the American Midwest felt alone, unprotected, and just a little spooked. “This feels like being at the bottom of a canyon, but it’s alive! Tom breathed. They were surrounded by tall buildings – so many floors high they got tired of counting them. Linda was suddenly quiet and seemed preoccupied. She was looking up at the buildings that surrounded them with a strange look on her face. “Look at these windows, they form a pattern!” Lights were blinking on here and there as apartment dwellers turned on their lights for the evening. It was like a pattern of lights on a huge checkerboard. But what was fascinating Linda was that the squares of light were not just bright squares, many of them had patterns, lines, like vertical lines, horizontal lines and half squares. She saw that it was the window coverings that were causing the patterns. She could pick out the type of blinds – there were some wooden blinds, she could tell by the wider louvers that cast a shadow that was solid. Some of the wooden blinds were closed all the way and left just a hint of a slit between the louvers, but others were only partially closed and she could see the white of ceilings through the openings. She could also pick out the faux wood blinds by the smoother shadow they cast although her practiced eye caught this better than Tom did. The windows that were covered with vertical blinds cast a different silhouette, featuring vertical dark and light stripes of various widths.

As the light of window after window clicked on they were fascinated to watch the patterns they cast. Some of the roller shades were only partially pulled, leaving a scattering of squares and oblong of light shining among the other lights. It was also easy to pick out the roller shades that were made with sheer fabrics, they shone only partially, and Linda reflected that if they were on a stand-alone house they would be partially transparent, and give only partial privacy. But they would be a super way to shut out the hard rays of summer without darkening a room and shutting off the light completely.

By now Linda was jazzed. “I never thought that New York would be a way to find out so much about window coverings,” she mused. “First thing when I get home is look up some websites like Hunter Douglas and see what I can find that will give our little place big pizzazz!” But out loud, she said, “OK, now on to see Aida! We for sure aren’t going to wins up in a dark cave like those newlyweds! “

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