There are a great number of medical conditions that might require a customer to have a room or a building customised for them. Some can be solved with something as simple as installing vertical blinds. One relatively common condition that can often be over looked is asthma. It is estimated that 1 in 10 children and 1 in 20 adults suffer from asthma and some fairly simple alterations to the design of their home can go a long way to reliving there suffering.
Asthma is caused by an allergy to dust mites so if you want to reduce the amount you or your client is suffering you need to look to find ways that limit the number of these mites that get into the air that you or your client is breathing in their home. One of the most important places to look is the window, curtains and many window treatments gather a great amount of dust and when they are opened or closed all this dust is aggravated and released into the air and breathed in. This is bad news for asthma suffers.
One way to avoid this is by removing the need for a window dressing by either installing windows that are frosted or have stained glass so that they can let light in without letting passes by see into the room. This can be a last resort for people whose asthma is particularly bad however it’s not normally a popular first choice as most people like to be able to see out of their windows as well as let light in.
So if you are going to have a window dressing which ones are the best for Asthma sufferers?
Vertical blinds
Blinds are a good choice but it’s important to make sure you have vertical blinds not horizontal blinds as the horizontal kind create an ideal platform for dust to land on. Horizontal blinds are also particularly difficult to clean as they really have to be taken apart and clean in a bath tub to get them properly clean meaning that any dust that collects can hang around for a long time. There is nowhere for a significant amount of dust to collect on a vertical blind so the vast majority of it will just fall to the floor where it can easily be swept or vacuumed in a normal cleaning routine.
Roller blinds
Another blind option that can be reasonably effective are the kinds of roller blinds that retract quickly (rather than on a pulley) the speed of their movement means dust is dispersed before too much can collect as long as they are being used daily.
Curtains
Curtains can be quite bad for collecting dust but sometimes a room’s design just needs curtains, if you are going to use curtains in an asthmatics home try to select machine washable curtains as these can easily be washed on a reasonably regular basis which should reduce the amount of dust they collect.
Dry clean only curtains are not a good idea as these are not only likely to be washed a lot less but also the dry cleaning process is not an effective way to kill dust mites. If these are the curtains you have a cheap way to kill the dust mites is to leave them over night in the freezer. Although changing the window treatment alone is by no means the answer to the problems of asthma suffers, it is an easy first step that should make a real difference.
