Café-Style vs Full-Height Shutters: Which Suits Your NI Home?

Full-height and café-style are the two shutter shapes we quote most often in Northern Ireland. Both are beautiful. Neither is universally right. The difference between fitting the wrong one and the right one is usually just one conversation.

Full-height: the default answer

Full-height shutters cover the whole window with one panel. They're the safest, most versatile choice — total privacy when closed, total light control at any angle, and they read as period-correct in almost any NI room. Living rooms, bedrooms, hallways, dining rooms, home offices — full-height is our default recommendation. Roughly 80% of what we fit in Portadown and Craigavon is full-height.

Café-style: the specialist

Café-style shutters cover only the lower half of the window. The top half is left completely bare — sky-light streams in unbroken while passers-by can't see into the ground floor. It's the classic Parisian-bistro look, and it's brilliant in exactly three situations:

• Front-facing kitchens and dining rooms on Belfast or Lisburn Victorian terraces where the window sits directly on the footpath.
• Bay windows in Georgian townhouses where the top sash needs to breathe.
• Any room where you want the maximum daylight upstairs and privacy at street level — home offices, snugs, front sitting rooms.

Tier-on-tier: the compromise (worth knowing)

There's a third option that solves the same problem more flexibly: tier-on-tier. The window is split into two independently-opening halves. Leave the top open for light, close the bottom for privacy — same effect as café-style, but you can also close both halves at night. On a period sash it's usually the right call. On a 2020s new-build it can look busy — we'd steer you back to full-height.

Louvre size across the styles

76 mm is our middle-of-the-road choice and looks correct in every style. If in doubt, choose 76 mm — you'll not regret it.

Full-height is the safer 8-out-of-10 answer. Café-style is the perfect 10-out-of-10 answer for the right 2 rooms.

How to decide

The single question we ask on every survey: does anyone ever walk past this window at eye level? If yes, and it's a front room, café-style or tier-on-tier is on the table. If no — bedrooms, back-of-house rooms, first-floor windows — go full-height and don't look back.