Advanced options
The child-safety rule is law, not advice: new blinds come cordless or with tensioned/breakaway devices because looped cords strangled children: if you're fitting blinds in a child's room or a home with small children, cordless (spring/wand) is the only sensible spec, and any inherited looped cord gets a cleat or breakaway NOW (GBP 2 fix). The measuring trap: recess fits need WIDTH AT THREE HEIGHTS (walls aren't square: use the smallest), exact-fit quotes assume YOUR numbers are right: made-to-measure returns don't exist: measure twice, order once.
What The Blinds Cost Calculator Works Out
- Estimated cost: the number of windows multiplied by the per-window price for the type and route, plus GBP 20 a window if fitted rather than DIY. Ready-made rollers and venetians run about GBP 35 a window, made-to-measure rollers and day-nights GBP 90, wooden venetians GBP 160 and plantation-style full-height blinds GBP 280, the shutters look at half shutter money.
- Type by room: blackout rollers or day-nights with side channels for bedrooms, faux-wood or moisture-rated blinds for steam rooms, wooden venetians and day-nights for living rooms, and verticals or day-nights for screen glare in a home office.
- Money and safety notes: online made-to-measure runs 40-60% below showrooms for the same spec, perfect-fit frames clip into uPVC beading with no drilling, and cordless operation is the only sensible spec wherever children sleep or play. Any inherited looped cord gets a GBP 2 cleat or breakaway now.
- Wide windows or patio doors (advanced): how many of your windows are wide openings, and what multiple of a standard window each costs. Blinds price by area, so a 2.4m patio door is roughly twice a standard window and a bay may need three separate blinds.
- Blackout fabric or side channels per blind (advanced): a blackout fabric upgrade typically adds GBP 10-25 a blind and side channels to kill the light-leak halo GBP 30-60. It is the sleep product, so it belongs on every bedroom blind.
- Motorised blinds (advanced): the count and the per-blind price, defaulting to GBP 90, the midpoint of the GBP 60-120 range for a battery motor and remote. It earns its money only on genuinely unreachable glass: the skylight and the stairwell, not the sitting room.
- Showroom markup over online (advanced): the simple mode prices online made-to-measure. The showroom equivalent card uplifts your total by the markup, defaulting to 50%, so you can see what the same spec costs with a home visit and a salesperson attached.
- All-in per window (advanced): the full estimate including wide openings, upgrades and motors divided by the windows, for comparing against a curtains or shutters quote on the same glass.