Window treatments for a kitchen

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The distinction that matters is washable versus wipeable. A café curtain goes in a machine, so it handles a kitchen away from the hob perfectly well. A cellular shade can be neither washed nor properly wiped, which is why grease ends it.

A window above a sink cannot take anything that hangs into the working area or that you have to lean over the taps to adjust. Two answers work.

A short blind mounted inside the recess, raised and lowered with a cordless lift you can reach across the counter. A café curtain on a tension rod covering the lower half of the window, which keeps the daylight above and gives privacy at eye level for anyone washing up. Both keep the sill usable.

Kitchens rarely need darkness, so this is the easy part. A tilting blind handles morning sun and a sightline from a path at the same time. A café curtain covers the lower window and leaves the top clear. Both keep a kitchen bright, which is what makes it a pleasant room to be in early.

If the kitchen faces west and gets a low hard beam across the counter in the late afternoon, that is a glare problem rather than a privacy one, and a roller shade lowered to the beam is the right tool. Best roller shades.

A kitchen blind needs cleaning more often than any other in the house, because airborne grease combines with dust into a film that dry dusting will not shift. Once a month with a damp microfibre cloth, supporting each slat from behind so you do not bend it. Twice a year, a vinyl blind can come down and go in a bath of warm soapy water — the fastest way to deal with a bad one. How to clean blinds.