honeycomb blinds

Winter warmers – all about honeycell blinds

If you’ve recently purchased discount blinds online or you’re researching your options with a view to purchasing, you’ll no doubt already know that blinds come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes, from venetian blinds to roller blinds, panel blinds, holland blinds and roman blinds.

While all these products offer different qualities, it’s worth bearing in mind that insulation and energy efficiency should be a key factor, particularly with winter fast approaching. Australians living in the cooler states may well be considering how to insulate their homes for greater heat retention, a sensible approach given the rising costs of energy bills.

A number of options are available – including complementing your blinds with extra insulation provided by curtains, perhaps with the added benefit of a pelmet. Such window treatments not only enhance the visual appeal and warmth of your home, they also contribute significantly to keeping temperatures cosy.

Another product well worth looking at if you’re purchasing discount blinds online, is honeycell blinds, also known as honeycomb shades.

honeycomb blinds

Often referred to as ‘cellular’ shades, ‘honeycomb’ shades or honeycell shades are constructed with cell pockets that resemble a honeycomb. This construction captures air in individual cells or pockets, resulting in highly efficient heat transfer reduction.

Increasingly popular in the Australian market, honeycomb shades are available in a wide range of colours. There are also numerous cell sizes available. It’s also worth knowing that there are a number of styles of honeycomb shade available, each offering different degrees of energy efficiency performance.

While some leading brands have developed their own highly specialised versions, the two key types of honeycell or honeycomb blinds are single cell and double cell.

Single cell honeycell blinds come in a variety of sizes, including 10mm and 20mm cell sizes. They feature a single air pocket with each honeycomb component stacked on top of the other, creating a blind made up of a series of single cells in a row.

Double cell shades are typically constructed using two 8-10mm that form a figure eight comprising two air pockets. Because they contain more pockets, they are generally considered better insulators.

Honeycell blinds are fairly technical products and some options are better designed and constructed than others. As with all such instances, you generally get what you pay for! So how do you know if your honeycomb blind is fit for purpose? Of course it’s worth asking the advice of an expert in the field, but it may also help to arm yourself with some technical knowledge too.

It is commonly accepted that the best way to measure the insulation capacity of these productsis to use something called R-Value. This is the measurement used to quantify the insulation properties of materials, as tested in a laboratory, and it calculates thermal resistance, or how much a given material prevents the transfer of heat. The honeycomb blind’s thermal resistance depends on the number of air pockets used. Because air is an inefficient conductor of heat, the more air pockets the product contains, the better it will perform.

Once you’ve done your homework, you’ll be pleased at the investment you’ve made. Honeycomb or cellular shades’ growing popularity is confirmation of their great benefits. And most suppliers will be able to provide fabric in a colours and texture that complements your other window furnishings, be they curtains, venetian blinds, roller blinds, panel blinds, holland blinds or roman blinds.

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