plank shutters to both sides of each front-facing window. Plank shutters, sometimes called board-and-batten shutters, can be traced back a long time to the original French country farmhouses and can still be found today on traditional barns and homesteads in America’s heartland. Plank shutters, with their Shaker-like simplicity, are becoming reborn in new house construction, making them feel more like, ‘home’ for those who crave authenticity. Plank shutters are constructed with a series of two, three, or four side-by-side vertical plank boards with either two or three horizontal batten boards affixed on top of them; one across the top and one across the bottom. Some styles of plank shutters include a third batten going horizontally across the middle or connecting the top and bottom battens on a diagonal, forming a “Z”. They can even be designed with a fourth batten to form an “X” in the middle of the shutter, to look like a classic barn door. These types of shutters can be designed in different ways; vertical boards can be spaced apart or closed with no spaces between them. Another feature seen in plank shutter design the incorporation of a decorative cutout in the centerboard. Some of the more popular ones are the fleur-de-lis, heart, flower, or half-moon. Volterra Architectural Products offers faux wood shutters in various widths and lengths to suit your window needs, in two, three, or four plank square style or two, three, or four plank elliptical style, which has an eyebrow arch shape at the top instead of a straight line across. To learn more about Volterra’s plank shutters, contact Volterra at 602.258.7373.