Roller blinds

The style of your home, the colour scheme and furniture all have to be considered when choosing the fabric for your custom roller blinds.

Your window furnishings should work with your home to enhance its character and feel, whilst delivering a solution that is both practical and beautiful. Whether you have a preference for neutral shades, or you are looking for a ‘jumping off point’ for a new colour scheme, we will provide you with the very best design advice.

Your roller blinds need to be practical as well as beautiful, which means they need to deliver the right amount of light control and privacy.

Before making any recommendations to you, we will look at the orientation of the room in relation to the sun and the light coming into the room. We will also look at the external view to assess the need for daytime and night time privacy.

We will then advise you accordingly on the best solutions and options available to meet your needs.

Once we have established the priorities in regards to light control and privacy, we will assess the different fabric types, and explain to you the features, advantages and benefits of each as they relate to you room.

Sometimes it may be beneficial to use a double bracket system which allows two blinds to be fitted together. We can advise on this and show you some fabric and colour combinations that work seamlessly together.

Roller blinds can be manufactured to be either back rolled, or forward rolled. If the fabric moves up and down at the rear of the tube (closest to the window) it is back rolled. If the fabric comes down in front of the tube it is forward rolled. There are a number of considerations when deciding which method to use.

Some windows have large openers on them which can obstruct a back rolled blind.

Some blockout / blackout fabrics have a plain white backing which is a different colour to the front of the fabric. If the blind is back rolled, the roll at the top of the blind will be a different colour to the rest of the blind. If forward rolled this doesn’t happen.

If a blind is being fitted to an architrave, forward rolling the blind leaves a bigger gap for light to enter the room.

If there are already roller blinds in the area,  changing the roll direction can spoil the aesthetic.

As always, you can rely on us to provide you with the best advice on these points to ensure the perfect fit and look.

If you have fitted pelmets or a plaster reveal running around the ceiling, that should obvioulsy be the place to fit your roller blinds. This will provide a solid fixing, and enble the blind to be totally removed from view when in the open position.

However it is more usual for roller blinds to be fitted either in a window recess, or fixed to the architrave. Fitting to an architrave enables the blind to extend beyond the window opening, and therefore provides better coverage – ideal if you’re looking to block out more light. Architrave fitting is more suited to blinds being back rolled, as a forward rolled blind leaves a larger gap between the blind and the architrave.

Fitting into a window recess can give a clean look with the blind being completely contained within the window opening. It also suits either forward or back rolled blinds, however there will always be a slight gap between the edge of the blind fabric and the inside of the window recess.

This is an important aspect which can easily be overlooked in the desire to achieve aesthetic perfection. We will discuss with you who uses the room, and how it is used.

For example, if the room is being used as a playroom for young children, we would be recommending a solution that is durable, easy to clean and of course child safe. Our custom roller blinds can meet all these challenges.

In a study or family room, the priority might need to be on controlling the amount of daytime light entering the room so as to minimise glare on laptops, mobile devices and televisions.

By fully understanding these points, our advice can be totally focussed on achieving the practical requirements as well as the aesthetic.