Questions about wood or faux blinds

[american_mama]

I want to buy some white blinds for the kitchen, and am hoping wood or faux blinds will look a bit nicer. I looked at the displays at Lowe's and there were also "composite" blinds... how are they different than faux? Why does anyone chose real wood, which is more expensive, over faux, which come with wood grain patterns and looked pretty darn good to me?

Does anyone have any experience with cordless wood blinds, such as one made by Levolor? They still have the string running down the sides to enable the blinds to swivel open or shut, but they don't have the cords to move the blinds up and down. The display at Lowe's was pretty messed up and they didn't look that great, but I wondered how they are IRL.

Lastly, any other distinguishing characteristics or advice about purchasing?

[Happy 2B mommy]

I would spring for the real wood if you want the wood stain and grain detail. But if you want white blinds, save your $ and get the faux, no one can tell the difference if they are white.

I also need to get new window blinds and have been looking at a couple of options. I've heard the cordless are more prone to breaking. I think the ones with the 'continuous' cord are pretty nice - safer for little ones and look a bit cleaner. ETA The ones I mean have the wand for tilting and the continuous cord for lifting and lowering.

I too have no idea what the 'composite' ones are - they look like the faux wood but are more expensive.

[ellies mom]

We got our white faux-wood blinds at Home Depot. They cut the width there and you adjust the length at home. We really like them. They are reasonably priced and work well. We have them on all of our windows except the living room where we needed to custom order because of the size.

[Snow mom]

We replaced some of our metal blinds with the faux wood cordless Levolor blinds a few years ago. I've been pretty happy with them but we don't regularly raise and lower them. It can be a little tricky to get them level at the bottom (but that could be due to a slight lack of squareness in my house.) I'm glad to have the cordless now that DD is constantly going after things like blind cords. The difference in price is probably only worth it if the look of the strings hanging everywhere bothers you. I'd say the same about real wood vs. faux. I think there is definitely a difference but it's minor enough that unless you like everything to be top grade (and can afford to pay for it) I wouldn't bother with investing in white wood blinds.

[C99]

Because faux wood warp over time, especially if you live in a hot/humid climate.

[s7714]

We prefer wood because it's substantially lighter weight than faux. We have wood on all the windows in our great room, and the blind on the huge picture window in that room is SO much easier to lift than the faux blinds on smaller windows elsewhere in the house.

We ended up with faux on many of our windows because of size limitations on the wood ones. Several brands could not be cut to the size of a few of our windows, while the faux ones could. And since we couldn't afford to pay the price of the made-to-order custom wood ones for all the windows to match, we went with faux.

[lorinick]

We have the faux wood blinds in white thoughout the upstairs of our house. We have real wood in the family and living room in but they are not white. We have had the white faux for 5+ years and they look great. The real wood blinds about three. They both look great, but I agree with pp if you want white just go with faux wood.