Why Medfield
Two Window Eras, One Town
Walk through the center of Medfield and the windows are tall, narrow, and divided into small lights, because that was the glass the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries could make. A 2.5 inch louver keeps that scale. The shutter reads as part of the house, the way interior shutters would have when it was built, instead of a modern panel dropped into an antique frame.
Head out toward Rocky Woods or into the streets that grew up from the seventies on and the picture changes. Those colonials were built around a front bay and a picture window in the family room, with glass measured in feet rather than inches. A 4.5 inch louver suits that size. It lets more light through open, looks cleaner closed, and keeps a bay from feeling busy.
The frames differ too. A settled house in the center is rarely square anymore, and a bay is three or five openings at angles to each other. Every panel we sell is built to the measured opening, so neither is a problem. What matters is that the measuring is done by the person who will hang the panels, and in our case that is Kevin, every time. You can read more about how we build them on our shutters page.
Now that the old state hospital grounds are open parkland along the Charles, a lot of Medfield living rooms look out at trees. Louvers tilted halfway keep that view during the day, and a closed panel adds a real thermal barrier on a January night, which an old single-glazed window appreciates.
