Do vertical blinds go with curtains?

Do vertical blinds go with curtains? Yes, depending as always on the sort of finish and style you’re trying to achieve.

A blinds/curtains combination can add real presence to a window, assuming you get the right match of fabrics and styles; with the results often being quite show-stopping when you do. Vertical blinds go with curtains and look “right” as it were within many styles and design ethos’s; however, as vertical blinds are one of the more modern styles of blinds, this might not be in-keeping with a period property, classical or traditional style, or shabby-chic type of interior.

In this blog post I’ll cover the most common questions we get about pairing vertical blinds with curtains and making it work; starting with explaining why vertical blinds and curtains look good together and moving on from there.

Do vertical blinds go with curtains?

Yes, vertical blinds pair well with curtains, allowing you to get the best of both worlds; the opulence and potentially, classical styling of curtains with the control and adjustability that only comes with light-filtering blinds like verticals.

During the day you can have the curtains open and tied back, while either opening the blinds fully in partnership with this or keeping them closed and tilting the louvres to the angle of your choosing to filter the light and protect your privacy without losing the view.

Why do vertical blinds go with curtains?

What is it about vertical blinds that makes them a good pairing with curtains, and why do vertical blinds go with curtains in most people’s opinions? This mainly comes down to the fact that vertical blinds are the only type of blinds that hang vertically, the clue being in the name!

While you can use colour and pattern effects like stripes on other types of blinds to draw the eye along the vertical, vertical blinds and curtains have a natural synergy as the top-to-bottom hanging louvres of the blind follow the vertical folds or pleats of the curtains in a very symbiotic manner.

In terms of functionality or how you use your window dressings, curtains tend to be made of thick fabrics that very much darken the room when they’re closed; which is what most people are looking for at night, but not during the day. However, during the day, glare or overly bright sun can call for something to take the edge off, which can only be achieved with certain types of blinds, as curtains can only be open or closed respectively.

This means that fitting curtains outside of or over the window recess allows you to block all of the external light when you want to, and enjoy the style and design of your curtains from inside of the room. During the day you can tie the curtains back and use your vertical blinds hung inside of the window recess to filter the light and control the angle of sight from outside into the room.

Do vertical blinds go with curtains if they have mixed prints?

Do vertical blinds go with curtains if one or the other has a print or pattern on it? First up, having both your curtains and blinds patterned with a different print on each of them doesn’t tend to work, or at least, needs to be handled with extreme care and will only work even then within quite a narrow range of styles.

Mixing prints is always somewhat risky territory in both clothing fashion and interior design, and generally, mixing prints on a pair of curtains hung with a patterned vertical blind stands a better chance of being a “miss” than a hit.

However, having a print or pattern on either the curtains or the blinds but not both looks perfectly cohesive, assuming that the colour match or contrast on the plain option works well with this. Generally it would be the curtains that you picked a print or pattern for before matching the blind in a plain colour to it rather than the other way around, but there is no hard and fast rule.

In terms of whether or not a matching print or design on both the blind and the curtains works, this is likely to be a moot point. Patterned vertical blinds tend to come in the form of simply abstract prints rather than designs in the classical sense of the word, and you’d be fairly unlikely to be able to find a pattern or design to match, even if you bought both the curtains and the blinds from the same retailer, as they’re made of different materials.

Can you put vertical blinds and curtains together in different colours?

Can you put vertical blinds and curtains together if they’re not exactly the same colour? Yes, and there are many different options and plenty of scope for creativity here.

You can either match the colours of the blinds and curtains exactly, or graduate the colour so that the curtains are one shade and the blind a lighter or darker shade along the same spectrum. Most people go for the curtains being the darker of the pairing, but this is down to personal choice.

You can also contrast the colour of blind and curtains respectively too, which works particularly well if your room has a two-colour theme or you’re working with a main colour and an accent colour.

Can you put vertical blinds and curtains together in any room?

Functionally, you may need to rule out putting a pair of curtains together with vertical blinds in your kitchen or your bathroom; as while vertical blinds can be made in waterproof fabrics, curtains aren’t waterproof and so aren’t suitable for rooms where humidity and/or contact with water are likely to be on the cards.

In style terms, there are no rooms that a vertical blinds/curtains fusion won’t work in.

Can I put curtains in front of my vertical blind?

This sort of depends on what you mean by “in front” of, as some mean with the curtains facing the room and the blinds behind, while other people mean the opposite.

For the purposes of answering this question, I am going to take “can I put curtains in front of my vertical blind” to mean putting the curtains inside of the window recess, and the blind behind them in the room itself, hung over or outside of the window recess and so, curtains. While you can probably physically do this as long as your window recess is wide enough, the real answer is no; this won’t work.

It will both look odd to have curtains in front of or inside of the blind, and it also negates the purpose of the curtains in large part too.

With the blinds hung inside of the window and the curtains over the top, you can close the curtains over the blinds or open them and leave the blind closed to filter light.

But with curtains on the window side of the affair, your room-facing view in the evening with everything closed will be the blinds, while the curtains on the inside won’t be useful for filtering light in the day either; meaning using the blind once more and effectively hiding the curtains at all times, negating the point of having them at all!