I believe the textured is just to give the impression of a wood grain and is just a personal preference. Personally, I prefer the plain flat slats......mainly for ease of dusting/cleaning. For more privacy with the blinds you can request cloth tape to hide the strings & holes or you can get the Routeless (no holes) blinds.

Would shutters work?

Where did you look that has a minimum of 34" for top down cordless? Did you try other sites?

Not sure how much privacy these provide, but I've always thought they were really neat, esp for a window that needs obscuring but letting light in. They come in many different styles...

Here is a link that might be useful: delia shades

As you, I have a bathroom facing the street and am truly struggling to find a compromise with privacy and at the same time maximize upper window light. I think your idea of textured blinds is a good one; I've seen these online and liked them.

My large BR window is very shallow, too shallow for plantation shutters but not for traditional which is what I may end up doing. I've never understood why designers don't design window coverings for shallow windows that mount half way up, where one raises the window.

Annies delia shades are beautiful, but one never sees a shade mounted in the middle of the window (half way from the bottom). If I were more bold, I'd try one on mine.

There are always window films that come in a wide variety of colors textures and degrees of obscurity and they're inexpensive. See decorativefilm.com.

This one is from artscape...

{{gwi:2137625}}

[Traditional Bathroom[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-bathroom-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_712~s_2107) by Columbus Design-Build Firms J.S. Brown & Co.

If you do a search on delia shades in houzz.com, you can find quite a few ideas.

This post was edited by AnnieDeighnaugh on Fri, Jan 30, 15 at 22:00

annz- the textured blinds are more like cloth- not faux wood. I am picturing that they look like the vertical blinds but are horizontal instead... they have options like 'grasscloth'... so I think they would be a lot lighter weight than wood/faux wood.
I didn't price out shutters, but I think they would be more $ than they're worth for this particular room...
maybe i'll explore the cordless options alittle further- I only looked at a couple of on line sites and similar messages popped up re: width minimums...
the delia shades look very neat- I wasn't familiar with them. I might look into them further!
and, I hadn't really been thinking about window films, but a window film on the bottom half and then an open weave linen sheer over whole window on small tension rods would probably look fine and be easy enough to sew up...there's plenty of frame to inset into... hmmm...
thanks so much for the additional ideas!!

I'm struggling with similar dilemma for a kitchen window. The treatments annieD posted is interesting. I'm 'attaching' myself to this thread