Shutters have had a long history of protecting windows on the outside but it may surprise you to know that they were originally designed for the inside of a home.

On Tudor (1485-1547) and Elizabethan (1558-1603) homes, shutters were made of solid boards and covered only the lower half of the window openings, where no glass was installed (glass was expensive in those days). When open, fresh air came into the room and the shutters folded back to look like decorative wall panels. When closed, usually with a bar across, light still came through the glazed upper half of the window. By the late seventeenth century, double-hung windows were popular. Shutters were still attached inside and decorative, but they covered the whole window.

During the Victorian period (1837-1901) when more houses were constructed from wood, shutters moved outdoors. The former stone and brick homes had such deeply recessed windows that exterior shutters would have been difficult to reach from inside, but wooden walls could be built much thinner and exterior shutters could now be accessed easily from the inside.