I close my pleated shades for a few reasons.
#1 Privacy at night for personal safety ( voyeurs, nosy neighbors with binoculars, peeping toms) and protecting contents of home from prying eyes whenever we’re not home
Energy savings is #2
Blocking piercing sun rays #3
Kitchen windows have sheer curtains that are always in the closed position, but you can see through them.
Living room curtains (insulated) are only closed in the evening when it gets dark for privacy and to keep cold air out in the winter. Otherwise they’re opened all day to let light in. When I say privacy it’s not like we’re running around naked or having sex in front of the windows, it’s because when it’s dark outside and lights are on inside, it’s like being in a fish bowl.
Bedroom shades are closed at night so the sun doesn’t blast us in the face too early in the morning, for privacy and in the winter to help with the cold.
The bathroom on the second floor doesn’t have any window coverings because it’s so high up, no one could see in and the bathroom on the main floor doesn’t have a window.
All curtains, shades, etc. are also closed during the day in the summer when we have a heatwave to help keep the house cool.
We don’t have any blinds or curtains in our bedroom. We have lots of big windows, but no one (usually) comes by. In the summer, we get direct sun light starting very early (5:00?) but we have learned to live with it. We discuss getting blinds, but haven’t done it yet.
I actually had to think about curtains, since we never touch ours. We are out in the country, no outside lights, ne need to hide from prying eyes, etc.
Other - “so the fucking daystar doesn’t wake me an hour before I want to wake up”
I don’t have curtains because, as an allergy sufferer, I regard them as horrible, suffocating dust carriers.
That said, you left of the three reasons I close my blinds:
Just for a general feeling of privacy and coziness. Also, I enjoy the morning and evening couple-minutes routine of going around and opening all the curtains/blinds to the daylight (and twirling the prisms and suncatchers to watch the rainbows), and then going around and closing them against the darkness.
In our bedroom, both our windows are “permaclosed” with blackout curtains and blinds down. My side is even taped down to prevent light leakage. I like to sleep in a bit on the weekends and I’m light sensitive when sleeping.
Our living room curtains have a good chance of being closed during the day if I’m watching TV as I like to have zero glare on the TV, though they are open a good bit too. Privacy is not really a concern at all, especially from our back yard drapes.
For me it’s partly a privacy thing, though there’s a tree in front of my windows so not much could be seen anyway. Mostly I do it for the same reason I make my bed every morning and keep the toilet lid down between uses, even though I live alone; it just feels proper(?)
Oh… Yeah, in the summer i close all the shades to keep the heat out. And the shade on the big window on the den is often parkway or completely down to avoid glare. But it also has a nice view of the bird feeder, so when I’m working there i leave it open enough to see out.
That one is at ground level, and there are people who could see in the whole room from public and public-ish places. But we’re always dressed when we are in that room, so who cares.
Heh, I’m jealous. Our dogs wake me up at 5:30 to go outside, which is great during the week, not so much on weekends.
We only have one downstairs window which overlooks a street, so I would say the primary reason is to prevent heat loss.
How do we know that heat loss through windows is important (and that curtains are more effective than you would expect at preventing heat loss)? Why, from research carried out at the Salford Energy House (Salford, Manchester) of course.
More than 25% of all the energy used in the UK is used in our homes. Finding out how we can use this energy more effectively is critical in meeting the government’s energy saving targets.
This is why we built the Salford Energy House, the world’s first full sized, two bedroom, brick built terraced house constructed inside an environmentally controllable chamber.
How 'bout that?
j
I realized after I voted that OP didn’t specify which windows. So that varies my answer. For the living room* and kitchen we don’t close the window coverings (kitchen doesn’t even have any), but the bedrooms have window coverings, and we use them because the windows face east, and dawn comes too early even in the winter.
*The late afternoon/evening sun shines very brightly into the living room during certain parts of the year, so we do pull the shade down for a little while during those hours.
Other, I don’t want the sunlight coming in. And, I’ll often watch a movie at night, much easier to get complete darkness that way
Daylight rarely comes at just the time I want to wake up.
I chose “Protection” as it was the closest reason. I have a weird aversion to people watching me, especially at home. So drapes are always closed, for the same reason I have huge (20 ft) hedges and abnormally high fences – I really, really like my privacy and go to great lengths to preserve it. I don’t even know if they’ll open, at least on some windows.
Most of my windows don’t have curtains, but they do have venetian blinds which are kept down and fully opaqued at all times to keep people from looking in at me and my stuff.
Some windows also have blackout curtains to keep out light. They don’t work very well, but they’re better than nothing. I have one window with a sheet of plywood in it, leaning up against inside of the blinds, and it works much better. I should probably do that on all my windows actually.
If I ever manage to get a house, I’m going to put shutters on all the windows and bolt them shut at all times. (Unless some HOA stops me or something, anyway.)
I close them for (1) Light, and (2) temperature control. The full sunlight warms the house a lot, and during winter, the cold seeps in through the windows. The heavy curtains I have take care of both issues.
I voted for energy savings, but that is because that is why we close most of them. (And they are mostly blinds, same thing.) In our bedroom we have one big window looking out at the backyard and two smaller windows high up looking towards our neighbor’s house. They are too high to let anyone see anything (without a lot of effort.) We close them in winter to keep things warm, but open the blinds, and the window, in summer to cool the house. Some curtains are closed all the time since we don’t go into those rooms, some are closed to block the light when watching TV.
So, it depends.
As a woman, I can answer this one: protection from peeping Toms and people who are looking for an easy target for all manner of crimes.
I close all my curtains and blinds at night and open them back up in the morning.