About Our Expert
Interior Designer Elaine Griffin was educated at Yale and moved to Harlem in 2000 to be part of the new Harlem Renaissance. “And it's just fabulous! Harlem is the cutting-edge of style in NYC today, with a creative energy you don't find anywhere else!" Viking Press will publish her first book, Design Rules: The Professional Decorator's Guide to Do-It-Yourself Style, in 2009.
The Griffin Philosophy? Whether classic or contemporary, super mod or timeless antique, I'm all about creating elegant, effortless-looking interiors that seem to have naturally evolved over time; warm, richly-textured rooms so delightfully inviting that one wishes to never leave them."
Shades We Love
Fat Slats
Vignette® Tailored Shades with a crisp, contemporary look, come in 6-inch flat fold size. Country Woods® Reflections® come in 2 5/8-inch slates and can be custom-made to fit almost any shape.
Organic Materials
Country Woods® Expose™ Blinds feature an exclusive TopShield™ finish that protects from everyday wear.
Energy Savers
Duette Architella Panache™ with 3/4" opaque shades can potentially reduce overall home heat loss by 30%—considerably decreasing your heating bills!
Privacy and Light
The Hunter Douglas Silhouette® top-down/bottom-up window shadings offer the added feature of TiltAnywhere™, which lets you tilt the vanes with the shading in any position.
New fabrics and cutting-edge technologies let you mix 'n match form, function, style and ENERGY!
Don’t leave ‘em for last—whether you're using curtains, blinds, shutters or shades, window treatments can make or break your décor, so says New York interior designer Elaine Griffin. Best known for her upbeat style and Good Works Makeovers at Oprah’s O At Home magazine, Elaine says window fashions this year are more stylish and "smarter" than ever, with new technologies that take privacy, light filtering, UV protection and energy efficiency to new heights. Here are her "hots" for 2008.
• Elegant Layering - Elaine call the style “Curtains Plus”--stylish curtains hung outside the window frame plus a treatment (shutters, blinds) closer to the window to filter light and afford privacy. The trick, says Elaine, is keeping the curtains tailored. “That endless puddle a la Alexis Carrington Colby, is way over!” Instead she’s choosing curtains with elegant, crisp details that make up for all that lost extra yardage, including shaped contrast trim (scallops and cutouts in bold, contrasting colors) and sharp feminine details like bias contrast edging. Her favorite? "The new shorter French pleat (an inch and a half is the length to look for now)!”
• Fat Slats - Everything (and everyone!) seems to be getting bigger, so why not enlarge your slat size? (Could they make you look thinner?) Well…according to Elaine, larger slats and vanes on blinds and shutters, at the very least, deliver more style impact and significantly more light. This year she's crazy for anything sized 2 3/8 inches to 3 inches and up.
• Lofty Heights - The loft apartment was born in New York City’s Soho, but the airy, free-flow style is being imitated all over the country now. According to Elaine, no loft is complete without at least one room of floor-to-ceiling windows, which demand clean, unfussy treatments that don't compete with the view or the streamlined interior. And don’t despair about odd shapes or skylights; Hunter Douglas can custom-make nearly any shape, height or width.
• Tinted Panes, Treated Shades - "These days, with the greenhouse effect, you need double protection," says Elaine, "especially in lofts with large windows." Applying a sun-screening film to panes cuts glare, reduces damage to curtain and furnishing fabrics and helps conserve energy. But have it professionally done---applying the adhesive film to windows is tricky to do by yourself. When buying window treatments, ask about UV protection; some Hunter Douglas products can provide up to 99 percent protection when closed.
• Sheer Delights - Super-fashionable sheer shadings not only filter light and provide privacy but also create a sensuous ambiance. Says Elaine: “I’m loving sheers now in luscious colors that go beyond cream, like taupe, gold, bronze, gray and even black!” Sheer black shadings, she suggests, look great in rooms that feature charcoal grays, browns, bronzes and dark colors--since they are sheer, they only dim the room slightly more than a lighter color. You can also try matching the sheer color to your curtain or trim.
• The Whole Foods Effect - “Natural in EVERYTHING is the theme du jour for 2008,” says Elaine, and that includes windows! “Wood slat blinds in natural wood finishes can bring an earthy chic to your windows,” she says. Look for pickled or rubbed oaks, distressed driftwood effects or exotic-looking rosewoods and ebonies.
• Multi-Remote Control - No more falling over furniture to fumble for that cord. Hunter Douglas features a new battery-operated remote control technology that lowers window fashions with point-and-press action. Like something out of a world-dominance movie, PowerGlide® with Platinum™ technology also allows groups of shades to be operated at the same time from various locations of the house.
• Top-Down/Bottom-Up - Remember that motto: it's the new way to control your shades so you don’t have to sacrifice privacy. Now you can operate shades and shadings from the top down, the bottom up or in combination so you can chose the view you want without being viewed yourself.
• Supersized Energy Savers - Do the math: 40% of the heat that escapes from your home leaves through the windows and 50% of the solar heat that enters a room comes in through the windows. The most energy-efficient window treatments are honeycomb shades with a triple cell construction; they increase the energy efficiency of a single pane of glass by 5 times! Says Elaine: "The fabric you choose--opaque is best--also makes a big difference!”