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How do I choose a roller blind? Start off by determining if the room in question will pose any particular challenges for the blind, look then at potential add-ons or options for other features, and then finally, start narrowing down your options for colours and designs, or start browsing for inspiration!
This blog post will tell you how to choose roller blinds for different rooms/applications, and tell you the basics of the sort of functions and options you might want to explore.
How do I choose a roller blind from scratch?
If this is your first punt into the world of blinds and you’ve got as far as finding out what roller blinds are and that you want to buy some, welcome! We will be more than happy to sell you as many sets of roller blinds as your postie can carry.
Roller blinds are the most popular type of blinds we sell, because they’re inexpensive, stylish, hardwearing, and really easy to put up on your own.
You may have chosen roller blinds specifically because of their simplicity and the self-explanatory nature of their name – it’s a blind, it rolls, you’re good to go.
However, you may have screeched to a halt shortly after this if you hit our website (or that of someone else we don’t like) with the mission brief of “get blind of xxx colour,” and found more options than you knew what to do with or how to interpret.
How do I choose a roller blind from scratch then? By working your way through the following four steps:
1. Ensure that a roller blind is definitely your window’s ideal partner
First up, make sure roller blinds are viable for the window in question. Roller blinds are perfectly well-suited to all windows except those that are absolutely enormous or ridiculously tall. If you do have a very wide/tall/overall large window, there’s a chance you won’t be able to get a roller blind made in a large enough size to fit it.
If this is the case, you can consider using two or even several smaller roller blinds side by side, or you may need to look at an alternative like vertical blinds, which can be made to fit more or less any size of window.
Also. There is one role or task that roller blinds cannot fulfil; that is, being used to precisely control light. Roller blinds are made of one sheet of fabric, unlike blinds with slats, louvres, or graduations. This means that a roller blind can be open or closed or somewhere in between.
If precision light control is something you want your blind to do but you particularly like the look/simplicity of roller blinds, I suggest having a look at day and night blinds instead, which are a special type of roller blind that is a little different to the norm, and which can also be used to filter light.
2. Determine if your room will pose any specific challenge to your blinds
Challenge like what, I hear you ask? Ok so basically this means use in rooms that involve water. Rooms that are apt to get humid or steamed up like the bathroom or kitchen require waterproof blinds to ensure that they’re up to the task.
You can get waterproof roller blinds in both PVC and vinyl fabrics (either being fine, neither type is inherently better than the other, they’re both good) but regular roller blinds are made of polyester, which is not waterproof.
Either search specifically for waterproof roller blinds, or check the material/waterproof status of any blind you’re considering before you order.
Another challenge a kitchen blind might face is the presence of vapourised cooking fats in the air, which will imbue a non-waterproof blind and make it look grimy in short order, as well as attracting dirt to stick to it. This is another good reason to pick a waterproof roller blind for the kitchen.
Also, a couple of other potential challenges some rooms/applications may possess might make waterproof roller blinds the right choice too. The first of these is if anyone smokes in the house/room; if so, a waterproof roller blind won’t become saturated with nicotine staining, and the inevitable surface yellowing that develops over time can just be washed off.
For children’s bedrooms or playrooms, waterproof roller blinds might be worth considering as well if your children are in any way messy; and if yours aren’t, are they by any chance still in their original packaging and available to exchange?
3. Decide if you’d like your blinds to have any other features
Roller blinds are the simplest type of blinds you can buy in terms of their design and functionality, but modern roller blinds also come with a few options you may want to consider for various applications too.
Roller blinds can be made with blackout linings, which is of course popular for bedrooms but also has potential applications for other rooms too, like a home office if you want to control the light for video calls by means of artificial lighting, or even the lounge for daytime gaming or horror movie marathons!
Additionally, you can also get blackout roller blinds that have thermally insulating linings; these help to reduce heat loss via the windows and help to keep your hard-earned heating spend on the inside of the house.
4. Start thinking about colours and styles
When you’ve got that far – determining that roller blinds are the right choice for you, sussing out if you might need waterproof ones, and deciding if you want any other features – you can begin to browse with only the colour/style left to decide.
This part is down to you!
How do I choose a good roller blind for a kitchen or bathroom?
A good kitchen or bathroom roller blind needs to be waterproof in the vast majority of cases.
For a bathroom or kitchen that is very large and well ventilated with no risk of your blinds getting splashed, you might be able to get away with regular polyester roller blinds; but this is the exception, not always the norm.
How to choose roller blinds for the bedroom or living room
Roller blinds for bedrooms and living rooms don’t have to be waterproof – although if you’re shopping for children’s roller blinds, putting the idea of waterproof options back on the table may have some merit!
For living rooms and bedrooms alike, roller blinds with a thermally insulating lining are worth considering, particularly if you have draughty windows and/or one of the main causes of heat loss from your home is via the windows. This could even mean that your roller blinds end up paying for themselves over the medium to long term, in terms of the heating spend they save you.
For bedrooms in particular, you might want to think about blackout roller blinds. These are obviously popular with people who need darkness to sleep, but good quality regular roller blinds (we call these dim-out roller blinds) do make rooms dark.
Rooms with dim-our roller blinds will certainly be dark enough for many people, and a lot of people prefer this to a full blackout too, as it can help you to orient yourself when you wake up if there’s a little muted natural light in the room to give you an idea of the time.
How do I choose a roller blind’s colour or design?
This is actually the hardest/most long-winded part of the process for many people, and there can even be too much choice in many ways, as roller blind ranges are extensive.
You might want to simply start browsing, see what catches your eye and make a shortlist and go from there, or you might want to narrow down what you want in terms of colours and/or patterns first, and search according to these parameters.
