Getting the Most from Your Vent Covers

Despite the increasing alternatives, forced air heating and cooling systems are still the most popular way to heat and cool homes today. Of course, the only way to get the heated or chilled air from the ventilation ducts into the living areas of your home is through air vents. These vents are necessary to allow your heating and cooling system to work, but that doesn't mean homeowners love to look at them. First, they're often a pretty bad eye sore. Secondly, even adjustable vents aren't always particularly effective at redirecting air to the rooms where you really want to raise or lower the temperature. New vent covers are the cheapest and easiest way to create an airtight seal on vents or to spruce up the look of the unattractive metal grates.

Basic Vent Covers
For safety and appearances, vents need to have some sort of cover over them. Even basic vent covers tend to have slats that help move the air out and away from the vent to fill your home. They can be painted to match your walls, floors, and ceilings, but since basic vent covers are designed to be permanently held in place they can't wallpapered or carpeted. It's usually impractical to have both floor and ceiling vents, making one season of heating or cooling less efficient than another. Most people know that warm air rises and cold air sinks. This makes it difficult for floor vents to uniformly cool your house in the summer and for ceiling vents to uniformly warm your house in the winter. Movable air deflectors can help redirect your air as it exits your vents and are cheap vent accessories.

Magnetic Vent Covers
Magnetic vent covers are the most common kind of airtight vent covers. You might think your adjustable, grated vents are keeping your heating and cooling systems from being overtaxed, but they can't compare to magnetic vent covers. There's no great secret to these covers. They're simply magnetic sheets that fit over your normal vent covers. Magnetic vent covers are a cheap addition to your vent system. You can cover a few vents in your home for less than $50 or do your entire home for most likely less than a $100. They can pay for themselves in months, instead of years like many home improvement installations. They can be painted, wallpapered, or carpeted to match your décor. The biggest mistake you can make is not double checking your primary vent cover to make sure it's a magnetic metal. A simple refrigerator magnet should do the trick.

Decorative Vent Covers
Magnetic vent covers can help camouflage your vent when the vent is being covered, but the rest of the time you're still left with the metal grating of your basic vent covers. If your major gripe with your vent cover is the poor aesthetics, you should consider installing new decorative vent covers. Cast iron and other decorative metals can have pleasing grilles fashioned any number of decorative styles. They can be custom-made by artisans who can match the grilles to your specific rooms and home décor.