With modern air conditioning and heating systems doing away with the need for compartmentalising space, open plan offices have become increasingly popular around the world in recent years. Where partitions for private meeting rooms are put in place, they tend to be glazed so that everyone in the office can see what is going on. Only in certain situations is it necessary to provide privacy with a window treatment for these internal partitions. So far as external windows are concerned, open plan offices only tend to have window treatments to prevent excess sunlight from coming in and rarely, if ever, to prevent prying eyes from looking in.
Given that so many Australian offices are designed to be open plan these days, what are the best window treatments to opt for?
Venetian Blinds
Easy to operate and highly adaptable, Venetian blinds are a very good choice for closing off the windows of meeting rooms and boardrooms when needed. A Venetian blind can be simply raised up when the room is open for business and lowered if sensitive material will be shown. What's even better about them is that their slats can be adjusted to either provide total privacy when they are in the upright position as well as partial privacy from passers-by when they are closer to the horizontal. Relatively cheap, Venetian blinds can even be installed between two panes of glass, meaning you never have to dust them.
Vertical Blinds
One of the most popular choices in offices because they are so cost-effective, vertical blinds can be pulled to one side so that their fabric slats line up next to one another to allow for the entire window to be exposed. These types of fabric blinds are also easy to control with a pulley system which means the slats move across a window's surface rather like a curtain. Unlike a pair of curtains, however, vertical blinds can be altered to allow a degree of light in according to the angle of their vertical slats. This makes them highly versatile in an open plan office.
Switchable Glazing
Ideal for open plan offices where you might need instant privacy on demand, switchable glazing uses an electrical current to make it more or less opaque as needed. With just the flick of a switch, both internal and external windows can go from transparent to frosted in an instant. They're great for partitioning offices that you might share with other businesses or in situations where confidentiality is needed.
Share26 September 2018
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