I am on the side of, “None of their ding-dang business what I do with my blinds!” What next, commenting on my choice of clothing worn in public?
But, more charitably, some people are just more gregarious than others, yah? And, like a drunk at the bar, want everyone to drink up too! They just can’t wrap their minds around having a neighbor who is more reserved, it makes them “itchy” so they say something.
I would say that certainly you don’t want to start up a dispute. Best to just nod and smile, and change the subject.
In the UK, if you have a house in a crowded street where passers-by can easily look into the windows, you might choose to put up net curtains. That kind of conceals the interior while allowing you to look out. Some people have net curtains that only cover the lower half of the window, but still efficiently hides your rooms from passers by.
This is a crowded island, and we have evolved strategies to get along.
I mean, why do you bother to close your blinds at night? It’s not like the light is leaking out and you are losing it or anything. Do you close your blinds at night? If so, why?
As a kid, I remember every morning we’d go through the house and open all the blinds, and at night we’d go through the house and close them all.
When I bought my own house, I closed the ground level blinds that face the street, and they haven’t been opened in 20 years.
I think you are being rude (and making an unwarranted assumption) - perhaps you don’t understand that there are different shades of blinds.
I’m typing this in my computer room at 19.00 UK time…and with no lights on.
My light-coloured blinds are down (as always) and I can see perfectly well by sunlight.
The blinds do prevent passers-by spotting my computer room (with two computers and a laser printer.)
It will probably be another hour or so before I switch any lights on.
How does your home appear compared to the others in the neighborhood? If you are the only folk to never open your blinds, they might just notice that it is different than most other folks. No real reason you should care what they think.
But if nothing much changes out front of your house - if you never park out there, change decorations, move blinds back and forth - it COULD make a home look unoccupied. We have a house across the way that is unoccupied except for a weekend every couple of months, and that is how it looks.
The main thing is that you keep it well maintained and in good repair, and are reasonably quiet. And if it looks the way you like when you drive up and away, that is all that matters.
We’ve lived in our house since 1999, and there’s a house a couple of blocks away that to my knowledge has had blinds closed every second. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when I finally saw people coming out of the house they looked like regular people. The house is between two parking lots, and I assume the house was there first. That may explain why the blinds are always closed.
My bedroom doesn’t even have a fucking window. But the amount of energy I save on air conditioning by keeping my place as dark as possible more than makes up for the “free lighting” benefit my “stupidity” is costing me.
ETA: What I don’t understand is why somebody would want so badly to look in my windows that they NOTICE the blinds are closed, AND have formed an opinion about it…
Agreed. It is very nosy and weird. How would someone even notice that you have ALL your blinds closed, even? Houses generally have four sides; are they creeping around the back yard looking at all those windows too?
Have you ever lived in the desert? If you had you might also get a little offended by someone calling my choice about the amount of heat I allow into my home either paranoid or stupid. I like to think that I’m neither but I will readily admit to being cheap enough to not want to pay a huge AC bill every month.
To the OP, our front window blinds are almost always closed due to the sun and our above mentioned cheapness. The front of our house has no landscaping or furniture because we don’t use the front yard. We are retired and our cars don’t move around much. Nobody has ever asked us why this is.
The house across the street never opens their front curtains. I have never even thought to wonder about why this is.
The lady who lives next door to them opens her curtains every morning around 8 and closes them every night around 6. I’m thinking that if I ever saw her curtains closed during the day I would knock on her door and check on her because of the break in her routine.
I don’t. I pretty much never close my blinds. But my house is set so people on the street don’t have a view of much of anything. I love the sunlight. I like to see out. I hate being in rooms with no windows. And if the windows are covered, they don’t count.
(Those lace things
are tolerable.)
But
This. Why the hell are you neighbors peering into your windows and noticing your blinds are closed. That’s just weird. And rude, IMHO.
IMO this is a ridiculous exaggeration. When you walk down the street, you don’t look at the houses you pass? Blinds open or closed are a very obvious thing to notice - without trying to look in the windows. Especially if I am glorying in the first sunny day of spring or something, such that I was happy to open the blinds and windows to let light and air in.
Another part of it likely depends on how much you walk. My impression is that some people basically never walk outside their front door beyond their mailbox. They simply drive in and out of their garages. Which is fine. And many of them really don’t give a damn how the outside of their house looks. Which I guess is OK, so long as it is well maintained. But when every house but one has a bench, flower pots, etc out front, you’d have to be damned unobservant to not notice the single exception.
But I have a dog which I walk every day. And I’m not looking at my phone as I do so. There is only so much to look at as you walk up and down the same blocks. I would notice a house that never opened their blinds the same way I notice the house that never cleans the sewer in front of it, or the one that had a PBR can on its front lawn for several weeks until it was finally shredded by their lawn crew.
Yeah - blinds open at night is a bit of a different thing, as you can be “on display” if your lights are on. But I generally feel I’m not doing anything in windows visible from the street that I care if anyone sees, so I don’t hassle with closing blinds I’m only going to open in the morning.
Sunlight - and views are very important to me. I would not live in a house that did not have what I consider adequate windows for light/views/ventilation. I guess I just notice when someone regularly arranges their house in a way to block what I consider essential. Different people are certainly entitled to feel differently. But I couldn’t stand living in a house with heavy curtains drawn all the time. (Of course - in this midwestern climate, without southern/desert conditions.)
I agree with these posts. It’s a nice day out today, so I went for a walk to get my morning coffee, and as I was walking, just looking around trying to take in some scenery other than the sidewalk, I would occasionally catch a glimpse of someone’s window with the shades up and notice that I could see right into their kitchen.
You don’t have to be trying to look into someone’s windows to notice whether their window coverings are up or down. As I was returning from my walk, I noticed that sure enough, my neighbors had all their front window shades partially up. It’s pretty obvious. Though I suppose you could argue I only noticed because the issue has been on my mind.
Unless the weather is truly crappy, I walk my dogs every day.
My neighborhood has much more diversity in their yards than that. Some have extensive and carefully manicured flowerbeds, and some have overgrown yards full of dandelions and clover. I suppose if every house looked identical, then something as small as windowshades being drawn would stand out.
I don’t think I could tell you what houses in my neighborhood have never opened their blinds, but I could tell you which houses I can watch TV over their shoulders through their window.
And during the day as well.
The front of my house faces the street. The “view” I get is of parked cars and streetlights. I suppose I would see people walking on the sidewalk as well, but I don’t really want to see that, and I don’t want my dogs running to the window to bark at anyone that passes by either.
My backyard is actually pretty nice, I have a little pond and some trees. Not only is there a much better view, but in order to see in you’d have to be in my backyard.
I think there are different kinds of glass. On older houses in my neighborhood, i never see in, except at night, with the lights on. On newer houses, i sometimes have a clear view even in the daytime. I find the latter disconcerting. But it’s not the norm. Most houses have enough glare on the windows to obscure the view in, when there’s more light outside than inside.
At any rate, have i noticed that i can see into a house? Yes. Do i remember which house has what view? No. With one exception, it’s just not interesting enough to pay attention.
(The exception was a condo near a friend’s condo when i was a kid. The people right across the way had an enormous screen, and played pong on it, and it was hard not to notice from within my friend’s living room.)
However, I know from Law Enforcement seminars a house with all the windows covered all the time, especially with alum foil or paper taped up, is often the sign of a drug house. So, if all your windows were taped up or something, they could have a real issue. But with your shades, there is no issue.
In most areas, that is against zoning laws. Fire issues, you need an escape. Unless you have a door to the outside in your bedroom??
I suppose if you had a huge walk-in closet, nobody could stop you from putting a bed in it and sleeping in there. But I learned when shopping for a house that door + window + closet = bedroom. If it lacks one or more of those three things, they can’t call it a bedroom. And if it has all three, even if it wouldn’t really be suitable as a bedroom (like my office, which is directly off the dining room, in the front of the house on the first floor,) they’re going to call it one because that makes the house worth more.