14 / Basswood
Wood shutters
2.5" · 3.5" · 4.5"
Panels milled from North American basswood, stained or painted to order. It is the light one, and that is the practical argument for it: a basswood panel goes about seven inches wider than a composite one before the hinges start carrying too much, so a wide opening takes fewer panels and fewer stiles stand in the view. It is also the line we keep out of the bathroom.
Alpharetta, GA · living room
What it is, in numbers.
As installed
- Louvre width
- 2.5" · 3.5" · 4.5"
- Width
- 24" – 120"
- Height
- 24" – 120"
- Panel width
- 36" maximum per panel
- Material
- North American basswood
- Finish
- Stained or painted to order
- Tilt
- Hidden rear tilt · centre tilt rod
- Mount
- Inside or outside, on a full-perimeter frame
- Lead time
- 4 – 5 weeks from measure
- Warranty
- 5 years on the panels and hardware, 3 years on finish
Options we quote
Fabrics are chosen from the sample books at the estimate — we carry the full range to your house rather than asking you to pick from a screen.
How much daylight each fabric actually stops.
These are the figures we quote at the kitchen table. They shift a few points with the mount and the direction the window faces, which is why we measure before we promise.
Louver angle
20% → 97% blocked
- Louvres open
- 20% blocked
- Louvres tilted up
- 69% blocked
- Louvres closed
- 93% blocked
- Closed, with the frame
- 97% blocked
The thinner louvre of the two, so flat open it gives back a little more glass.
The setting a west-facing room lives on from about four o'clock.
Light still passes at the pins on each end of every louvre.
With the frame closing the perimeter, this is as dark as we get without a blackout fabric.
Light: 54% blocked34°
Drag the slats. This is the range this line covers on a typical window — from 20% at its most open to 97% closed. Your actual number depends on the fabric, the mount and which way the window faces.
Get the exact number for your windowThe widest openings in the house are the reason this line exists.
Basswood carries a 36" panel where composite stops at 29" — on a bay window that is one fewer stile in the glass.
Stain, and what it costs you
Basswood is the only shutter here that takes a stain, and a stained shutter is a different object from a painted one — it puts the window in the same conversation as the floors and the furniture instead of disappearing into the casing. It also moves in sun: over years a south or west window will lift a stain, evenly, across the louvres that are exposed. We bring the stain chain to the house and hold it against your own woodwork in daylight, because no photograph of a stain is worth anything.
Where we will not put it
Bathrooms with a shower in them, laundries, and the window directly over a kitchen sink. Wood swells with repeated wetting and a swollen louvre stops tilting flat — the panel does not break, it just stops working properly, and there is no undoing it. When somebody asks for basswood in those rooms we quote composite instead and say why.
Rooms we install these in most: Living room · Dining room · Study · Stairwell · Primary bedroom
The same line, in 7 Georgia houses.
8 photographs
What people ask about wood shutters.
A single basswood panel runs to about 36" before the hinges are carrying more than they should, and we cover the opening itself out to 120" in as many panels as it takes. A 70" window is two panels in basswood and three in composite, which is the whole argument for the wood on a picture window.
Close, honestly, rather than exactly. Basswood is a mild, even-grained timber and it does not take a stain the way oak or walnut does, so a match against a red oak floor lands near it rather than on it. We hold the samples against the floor in daylight at the estimate, and we say so when we cannot get there.
Not if the panel is measured right. A rattle is a louvre with too much play in its pins, and that is either a panel built wide of the opening or a house that has settled since. The first one is ours and it is a ten-minute visit; the second we come out and re-hang.
Three lines next to this one.
Free in-home estimate
See basswood samples in your own light.
We bring the basswood books to your kitchen table, measure every window, and price the job on the spot. Free, about an hour.