Meritage Homes upgrades: designer-curated finishes, included blinds, and what to add after closing

Updated October 25, 2026

The short version: many Meritage homes come move-in ready, with finishes picked by its designers and blinds already on the windows. That changes the usual new-build advice. You don’t need to cover every window in your first week. You need to decide which rooms deserve more than a builder blind, and the answer is usually the bedrooms and the windows people see from the street.

Shutter Boys and Shade Boys aren’t connected with Meritage Homes. What follows about Meritage Homes comes from its own published pages, linked in the sources; the rest is our own advice.

Who Meritage builds for, and where

Meritage describes its homes as “designed for first-time and first move-up buyers,” and lists building locations in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Utah^[1]. It also shows its eleventh ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year award^[1]. Both facts matter for window coverings: a first home often stretches the budget at closing, and an energy-focused build changes what a window covering is for.

How Meritage handles design

Meritage doesn’t ask most buyers to pick every tile. It offers “designer-curated interior finishes … hand-picked by design experts”^[2], and many of its homes are sold with “quick move-in timelines”, so buyers can “close within a timeframe that’s similar to buying a resale home”^[2]. When it introduced its Design Collections in 2020, Meritage described them as “expertly coordinated flooring, cabinets, countertops and more that work together perfectly,” in styles from Traditional and Transitional to Modern, with “clear, transparent pricing”^[3].

Its current buying page goes further for move-in ready homes: homes “available to move into within 60 days,” a full set of Whirlpool appliances, and “Whole Home Blinds”, with the line “There’s no need for the measuring tape or level”^[4]. Not every Meritage home or community is the same, so read your own purchase agreement for what’s included in yours.

What’s worth changing, and what can stay

With the big finishes chosen as a set, the upgrades worth thinking about are the ones the collection doesn’t decide. This is our rule of thumb, not Meritage’s advice:

Builder blinds or shutters: room by room

Builder-installed blinds do the basic job: privacy at night, some light control by day. Where they fall short is the rooms you use most and look at most. A few guidelines:

• Bedrooms first. New communities put neighbours close. Louvers tilted up give privacy while the light still comes in, and a shutter is one solid panel rather than a stack of slats on strings. A 36 × 60 in bedroom window in our basic build is $400 – $500, before tax and shipping.
• The street-facing windows. These are what neighbours and the HOA see. Many associations want a white or off-white face toward the street, which our standard white suits. Ask your HOA before choosing a colour for front windows.
• The main living room. A pair of 48 × 60 in windows is where shutters change how a room looks the most. Each is $540 – $660 in the basic build.
• Sliding doors. Leave the blind or use a shade. A shutter on a slider needs a bypass or bifold layout; a vertical shade is often the simpler answer. Our patio door page covers both.
• Secondary bathrooms, laundry, garage entry. Keep the builder blinds. They’re fine where nobody lingers.

When you take blinds down, keep them. Bag the brackets and screws with each set and label the room. If you sell, a buyer may want them back on, and spare blinds are handy for a room you haven’t done yet.

Energy-efficient homes and window coverings

Meritage’s energy page lists spray foam insulation, multispeed HVAC, sealed insulated ducts, conditioned attics and low-E windows that “deflect up to 70% of the sun’s heat & reduce the chance of indoor condensation”^[5]. It says its homes are “inspected, tested & verified to EPA standards to be more efficient than typical new homes”^[5]. ENERGY STAR describes certified new homes as “designed and built better from the ground up”^[7].

Be clear-eyed about what a shutter adds to that. The window, the insulation and the HVAC are already doing the work. A closed shutter adds a layer at the glass, but we don’t know of a study that measured how much it saves in a home like this, so we won’t give you a number. Our energy guide sets out what the research measured and what it didn’t. Buy shutters for light, privacy and how the room looks; anything they do for comfort near a west window in July is a bonus, not a payback.

One practical point about tight, efficient homes: they hold moisture. On cold mornings, open the louvers once the room is light so warm air reaches the glass. Meritage says its low-E windows reduce the chance of condensation, and that’s easier to keep true when a covering isn’t pressed shut against the glass all night and all day.

From contract to the second year

The milestones come from Meritage’s own pages; the last column is our suggestion.

Fitting shutters without creating a warranty question

Meritage takes warranty claims through its homeowner portal^[6]. It notes that third-party inspection reports often include “homeowner maintenance items,” which “aren’t a part of your home’s warranty”^[6]. Anything you add yourself is in the same category: yours to look after. Three habits keep that line clean:

• Report window problems before you fit anything. A sticking slider, a cracked sill or a gap at the casing should go through the portal while the opening is bare. A shutter frame over a problem makes it harder for the warranty team to see and fix.
• Photograph every window first. Dated photos of clean frames, with the blinds still up, settle any question about who did what.
• Screw into the jamb, not the window. Our install guide fixes the shutter frame into the drywall or wood return around the window. If you can’t tell what’s behind it, ask the warranty team before you drill. Leave the window’s own frame and seals alone.

Matching shutters to Meritage trim

Because the finishes come as a coordinated collection^[3], the trim colour is usually one paint throughout. Shutters look best when they read as part of that trim. Ask for the trim paint’s brand, colour name and sheen; if it’s close to our standard white, use that. If it isn’t, the designer lets you name a colour to match; a colour match adds to the price, so price one window first. Match the sheen too: the same colour in a different sheen looks like a different colour on louvers.

Questions to ask your sales counselor before closing

These are questions, not claims about what Meritage offers; answers vary by community and home.

• Which windows have blinds, and are the sliding doors included?
• What paint colour and sheen is the trim and the window returns?
• How deep is the window return, from the room side of the trim to the glass?
• Which ceilings have a fan-rated box?
• What does the HOA require for window coverings that face the street, and for anything fixed outside?

The trim colour decides the match; the depth decides which louver size tilts freely. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s homebuying guide is worth reading alongside these, for the loan side of the same decisions^[8].

What a Meritage-size home adds up to

If your home came without blinds, or you decide to do every room eventually, here is a made-up two-storey home priced in stages from our live price list:

Each window is priced on its own, so the stages add up to the whole; splitting an order only means each part ships separately. Keep the louver size, moulding and colour the same from the first order so later rooms match. The designer prices your own sizes in a few minutes.

Other upgrades after closing

Outside, and the rooms where shades suit better

Shutter Boys makes wood shutters. Our sister company, Shade Boys, makes the rest: windproof motorized patio shades that run in side tracks, for a covered patio or porch, which you can fit yourself or have a local installer fit, and indoor roller, solar and patio door shades made to measure. A sliding door or a wide wall of glass is often better served by a shade than a shutter; bedrooms and street-facing windows are where shutters earn their keep.

Anything fixed to the outside of the house usually goes to the homeowners association first. Ask for its architectural review form before you order patio shades, and expect it to ask for the colour, the mounting and a photo of a similar product. Shade Boys’ HOA guide covers what boards usually look for on the windows; no product is approved everywhere, because each association decides for itself.

Meritage areas we cover

Our region pages show local housing and weather figures and what they mean for shutters: Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Colorado, Utah and California.