There are a few features in our new house that I feel are fairly Swiss or European compared to US homes, so I wanted highlight them as I have time to take some photos.

First up are our automatic rolling blinds.

I had these at the first house I moved into in Switzerland but I have not had them in every house or flat I’ve lived in. I consider them kind of luxurious. They are basically big blinds on the outside of your house so you don’t have to deal with all the muck and dust on blinds within your home… and they are a lot more sturdy and hard-wearing than traditional American blinds.

Some Swiss houses have manual rolling shutters that you have to crank by hand, but these ones have buttons for up, down and stop in the middle of the switch. They are sooo convenient and I kind of love them.

I honestly wish we had had the option to have them in the bedroom because it would be SO much darker with them. They are really great for blocking out light.

My only complaint with ours are that there are two sets of shutters in the living room and the switches are not together so if you want to open or close both of them, you need to walk the length of the hallway and switch each shutter individually, which can be slightly annoying if you are heading out of the flat and want to shut off everything from the door.

We also have two for each set of windows in the kitchen. If we had gotten a flat on the side of the complex we actually would have these shutters everywhere, but we strangely landed on the side of the building with green plantation shutters on the bedroom side of the units. More on how those work later!

How do you shut out light in your house? Do you have different treatments for different rooms?