Plastic vs. Vinyl Blinds: What’s the Difference?
Many people who want to replace their exterior shutters take a close look at the shutters in their home and quickly realize that they are made of plastic. The next step is to go to your local home improvement store or use the Internet to search for “plastic blinds.” What many homeowners find is that the selection of plastic shutters is very limited, but other materials are available such as vinyl shutters, composite shutters, wood shutters, and fiberglass shutters. Some people at this point wonder “if the shutters I have now are plastic, why aren’t plastic shutters available anymore?”
Truth be told, vinyl blinds are made from a type of plastic. So why are they called vinyl blinds and not plastic blinds? To understand the answer to this question, you’ll need to know a bit of history of the vinyl siding industry.
In the late 1950s, when plastics were in their infancy on the market, they were far from perfect. Injection-molded plastic products were almost instantly considered inferior compared to metals, woods, or other construction materials. When plastics were first introduced as home building materials (i.e. exterior siding), a new marketing ploy had to be invented to fend off jaded buyers of plastic products. Therefore, the term “vinyl siding” was created to market the new product to homeowners and builders. This is not to say that they were lying about what it was, they were just being more specific. After all, vinyl is a type of plastic.
Many of these same manufacturers soon realized that there was a market for plastic shutters as well. Naturally, the term “vinyl shutters” was used to market these products, and to this day, most vinyl shutters are made by vinyl siding companies.
The technology behind plastic injection molding has come a long way since the 1950s. It is now almost inconceivable to buy a product without some form of plastic injection molding built into it. In fact, plastic shutters will last longer and require less maintenance than wooden shutters. As such, most people probably aren’t afraid to buy “plastic blinds” today.
So why do we still call them vinyl blinds? Well, it’s not that easy to change an entire industry. Plastic blinds can perhaps be called vinyl blinds indefinitely, even though the polymers they’re made of aren’t technically considered “vinyl.”
While there are many materials available for exterior shutters, plastic has proven to be a long-lasting, low-maintenance, and low-cost material.