Window Blinds

[Clive Arthur]

I'll be moving house soon, from a brick-built terrace to a granite block terrace. One major difference (apart from how quiet the stone place is) is the windows. In the stone house they're inset into the stone so have a wide cill inside and are flush with the outside; in the brick house they're set into the much thinner wall the other way round and are essentially flush with the inside.

In the brick house, we have a few wooden venetian blinds and some roller blinds. These mount above the windows, and don't obstruct them when pulled up.

The stone house has rather naff vertical blinds with thin flat plastic(?) leaves about 3" wide and plastic chains at the bottom. I'd only ever noticed these in offices before, and assumed they were some sort of cheap surplus thing installed by the previous owner[1].

However, I notice that many houses in the area have similar blinds. I realise now it's because they can be pulled to one side and be out of the way, whereas a normal venetian blind would either be inset and thus block a few inches of light when fully retracted, or would be on the wall inside looking s**te and putting the cill beyond use.

But I don't like them, they look really cheap. What else is there?

[1] Who must have been given a drill for xmas, but only one bit, 8mm I'd say. About 150 holes to fill, all the same size. If the screw was small, he'd use a smaller plug inside the larger plug.

[Owain Lastname]

Verticals collect less dust than venetians.

You can get them with a variety of leaf widths and materials, including 'voile' effect stuff.

Replacement slats are available if you don't want to replace the whole mechanism.

Or any material if you spray it with non-fray adhesive.

Owain

[Theo]

Quite a number of options these days:

'Shop our blinds'

(a lot of the 'online blinds' sites are owned by Hunter Douglas and offer similar product lines. That one indicates the range on offer)

What do you want out of a blind? Privacy? Sound insulation? Light reduction? Blackout? Keeping in the heat? Keeping out the sun? Start by deciding what you want it to do and then think about how it will look and work.

Theo

[Andy Burns]

In my study I have a "day and night" roller blind, has similar benefits to a venetian, it can be partially or fully up or down, when up it hides fully within the size of the top PVC frame, and you can alter the amount of light independent of whether it's up or down, it doesn't have slats to collect dust.

video of how thy work, at night, from outside they probably look like I'm using an Aldis lamp!

[Clive Arthur]

Thanks, they look good.