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My house has the "Are You Kidding Me" 11ft wide windows with 1ft wide shutters variety. It's stupid practically speaking, but they've been there for decades an

My house has the "Are You Kidding Me" 11ft wide windows with 1ft wide shutters variety. It's stupid practically speaking, but they've been there for decades and they look nice. Rather than ranting about how terrible they are, it would be be helpful to offer some alternative dressing - I have 3 more huge windows without fake shutters that look quite plain...

fortyseven 5y ago
> they look nice That's the key to this entire thing -- I'm having trouble believing people don't understand that this: discussion on the functionality is fine, but at the end of the day the "fake shutters" are decoration.
- tene 5y ago
  I'm having trouble believing that people don't understand this: the criticism isn't that someone is decorating, but that this specific choice of decoration feels self-contradictory and stands out as unusual to many people. If you want decorative rectangles to the sides of your windows, great, go for it! What's the specific value add of designing those decorative rectangles to look like spectacularly useless shutters, instead of any other decorative design that's not trying to look like something functional in a way that contradicts that suggested functionality? Alternatively, if you want your decorations to look like shutters because you like the aesthetic of shutters, why would you choose for them to look like useless nonfunctional shutters instead of designing them to actually look like a usable shutter? What's the reasoning behind someone who sits down to design a house and concludes "I want this to look like shutters, but I really want it to look like bad, useless shutters that could never work."? Either make it look like a shutter, or don't, but it's baffling to me that so many people decide to hang out in the uncanny valley between those two options.
joshspankit 5y ago
“it would be be helpful to offer some alternative dressing” Honestly, this is probably the part that irks me the most about fake shutters (and that says a lot). If you’re not going to make the illusion convincing, then why not make something genuinely aesthetically pleasing that’s not shutters at all? Something based on picture frames, or some type of CNC-cut pattern, or even just wider vertical sections painted the same colour as the rest of the trim. We’ve been making interesting accents around rectangles for hundreds of years. The well is deep and full of beauty!

fortyseven 5y ago

> they look nice That's the key to this entire thing -- I'm having trouble believing people don't understand that this: discussion on the functionality is fine, but at the end of the day the "fake shutters" are decoration.

tene 5y ago
I'm having trouble believing that people don't understand this: the criticism isn't that someone is decorating, but that this specific choice of decoration feels self-contradictory and stands out as unusual to many people. If you want decorative rectangles to the sides of your windows, great, go for it! What's the specific value add of designing those decorative rectangles to look like spectacularly useless shutters, instead of any other decorative design that's not trying to look like something functional in a way that contradicts that suggested functionality? Alternatively, if you want your decorations to look like shutters because you like the aesthetic of shutters, why would you choose for them to look like useless nonfunctional shutters instead of designing them to actually look like a usable shutter? What's the reasoning behind someone who sits down to design a house and concludes "I want this to look like shutters, but I really want it to look like bad, useless shutters that could never work."? Either make it look like a shutter, or don't, but it's baffling to me that so many people decide to hang out in the uncanny valley between those two options.

joshspankit 5y ago

“it would be be helpful to offer some alternative dressing” Honestly, this is probably the part that irks me the most about fake shutters (and that says a lot). If you’re not going to make the illusion convincing, then why not make something genuinely aesthetically pleasing that’s not shutters at all? Something based on picture frames, or some type of CNC-cut pattern, or even just wider vertical sections painted the same colour as the rest of the trim. We’ve been making interesting accents around rectangles for hundreds of years. The well is deep and full of beauty!