The New-Homeowner Window Timeline

Most new homeowners handle window treatments exactly backwards: they live with bare windows for six months while they "decide," then discover custom shutters need another 6–8 weeks after that. A year passes. The neighbors have seen everything. Here's the timeline that gets it done in weeks instead — built around factory-built shutters that ship fast instead of custom orders that don't.

During escrow: measure early

The smartest move happens before you own the house. Ask your agent for access during the home inspection or final walkthrough and bring a tape measure. You're not installing anything — you're just collecting numbers: width, height, and depth for every window, labeled by room. Our how-to-measure guide fits on a phone screen, and the whole house takes under an hour.

Measuring during escrow does two things. First, it turns "we'll deal with windows later" into a concrete plan with real numbers. Second, it lets you order the day you get keys instead of starting from zero — which matters more than you'd think when the move-in chaos hits.

Move-in week: privacy first, beauty second

Week one is about privacy, not perfection. Bedrooms, bathrooms, and any street-facing window get covered immediately — even with five-dollar paper blackout shades from the home store as a stopgap. You need to sleep and shower without an audience; aesthetics can wait until the shutters arrive.

This is also the week to finalize your shutter plan. Walk the house with your escrow measurements, confirm the mount type per window (inside mount needs 1-3/4 inches of depth — see our inside vs outside mount guide), match each window to its RS size on the size chart, and place the order. One order, one $200 flat delivery, whole house covered.

Why ordering early beats waiting

The traditional path — wait until the house "feels settled," then start a 6–8 week custom order — means bare or half-covered windows for the better part of a year. The early path looks like this instead:

There's a financial argument too. New-home budgets bleed from a hundred small decisions; window treatments are one of the few where acting fast actually saves money. Ordering the whole house at once means one delivery charge, one project, and no "we'll do the rest later" phase that never happens. And white plantation shutters are decor-neutral — they look right with whatever paint and furniture you choose later, so there's nothing to wait for.

The room-by-room priority order

If budget or energy forces you to phase the project, work in this order — it's ranked by privacy need first, daily impact second:

One caveat: phasing means multiple deliveries at $200 each. If you can swing the full order up front, the per-window cost drops meaningfully. Run both scenarios on the order page before you decide — the math takes two minutes.

New-homeowner questions, answered