Ask ten shutter companies whether you should have wood or composite and you will get ten answers, most of them shaped by whatever happens to be easiest to sell that week. The honest version is duller and more useful: the decision has less to do with taste than people expect, and far more to do with what the room does to the air.
Shutters live at the window, which is the coldest, dampest, brightest surface in most houses. A material that behaves impeccably in a hallway can sulk in a shower room. So rather than argue wood against faux wood in the abstract, it is worth walking round the house. (If you already know which side you are on, our wooden shutters and faux wood shutters pages take each argument further.)
Faux wood is a description, not an insult
"Faux wood" gets used as a polite way of saying cheap, which is unfair. It simply means the panel is not solid timber all the way through. Our Classic composite collection is exactly that: an engineered material chosen because it does not much care how humid the room is. It starts from £163.20 per m².
Our Endurance collection sits in an interesting middle ground. The core is paulownia, a genuine lightweight timber, and it is coated in ABS. So it is a real wood core wearing a hard, sealed skin rather than a slab of plastic pretending to be a tree. It is the one we point at for the busiest, dampest rooms, from £214.20 per m².
On MDF, since somebody always asks
MDF shutters exist. They are widely sold and they are usually the cheapest thing on the page. We do not supply them, and it is worth being clear about why rather than being coy.
MDF is wood fibre and resin pressed into board. Sealed, undisturbed and kept dry, it behaves perfectly well. The difficulty is that a shutter is not an undisturbed board. It has cut edges, drilled holes and hinge points, and every one of those is a route past the coating. Once moisture reaches the fibres they swell, and swelling is not something a panel does elegantly: you get bowing, and finishes that lift at the edge. In a dry lounge you may never see it. In a family bathroom you are backing a fairly unattractive horse.
We would rather stock three materials we are happy to put in a wet room than sell a fourth with a paragraph of small print attached. That is the whole of our position on MDF, and it is why you will not find one in our range.
Bathrooms, en suites and kitchens
These rooms produce steam on purpose, several times a day, and then cool down again. That cycle is what tests a material, not the water itself. This is composite and ABS territory, which is why our bathroom shutters guidance leans on Classic and Endurance rather than the timber collections.
Classic is the sensible default for a bathroom, a shower room or a kitchen window near the hob. Endurance is the one to consider where the room barely gets a chance to dry out, or where a window sits directly over a bath. Both take the same louvred adjustment as the timber ranges, so you are choosing durability, not accepting a lesser shutter.
Living rooms, snugs and bedrooms
Here the argument flips entirely. A living room is dry, stable and looked at properly, often from six feet away in daylight, and real timber grain rewards that scrutiny in a way engineered materials do not quite manage.
Our Signature collection is the flagship: the finest basswood, from £244.80 per m². Heritage is brushed timber, with the grain left visible and a warmth that suits older houses and darker schemes, from £255.00 per m². Linea is the lighter, more contemporary option, a lightweight timber with a refined finish, from £171.60 per m². Our living room shutters page goes through how these read in a bay or across a wide window.
Bedrooms follow the same logic, with one addition: think about the light you want at six in the morning in June, not the light in the showroom. Our bedroom shutters page works through how dark you actually need it.
Conservatories and garden rooms
A conservatory is the hardest room in the house to specify for, because it is three different rooms depending on the month. Glass swings from frigid to greenhouse and back within a single day, and humidity moves with it. That combination is unkind to unprotected timber.
For a conservatory or a garden room we would generally steer towards Classic or Endurance, on the grounds that stability matters more here than grain does. Our conservatory shutters page goes further into managing glare rather than darkness. The bonus is practical rather than aesthetic: louvres let you knock the glare down at four in the afternoon without blacking the room out, which no blind manages gracefully.
How we sell, so there are no misunderstandings
We are supply-only. You measure, we make the shutters to those measurements, you collect them and fit them yourself or arrange your own fitter. We do not fit, and we do not recommend fitters, which means nobody here has any reason to talk you into a bigger order.
If you know which rooms you are doing, you can get a made-to-measure quote with your sizes and preferred collection. If you are torn between a timber and a faux wood for the same window, tell us what the room does in winter and we will give you a straight answer.
For the two rooms that punish the wrong material hardest, see which collection suits a bathroom or kitchen; for what each choice does to the bill, the cost guide has honest numbers.