Blinds

The four things that actually decide it

How wide is the window. A roller carries its weight on a tube and handles a wide span comfortably. A roman hangs the whole weight on cords and a small mechanism, and past roughly the width of a door and a half it lifts unevenly. A wide window usually means a roller, or two romans rather than one.

How often you open it. Mechanisms wear where they are used. A window you set once and leave can take anything; one operated several times a day wants the simplest mechanism available, which is a roller. Anything you walk through — a balcony or sliding door — should not have a blind at all.

Does the room need to be dark. If the answer is yes, the edges matter more than the fabric: side channels on a roller, or an outside-mounted blind with a generous overlap. What darkness actually requires is on our blackout page.

What is above the window. Most Dubai towers have drywall over a stud frame around the reveal, not concrete. Drywall decides where brackets can go and what a blind may weigh, and it is the most common thing done badly here. We check the substrate at the measurement.

Every blind leaks light at the edges

This is the thing the category does not admit, and it is true of all of them. A blind sits inside the reveal and must be cut narrower than the opening to move without catching. That leaves a gap down each edge — about a finger's width — and the fabric can be entirely opaque while those two lines stay bright.

Side channels close it on a roller: a slim track down each side that the fabric runs inside. They must be specified before the blind is made, because the fabric is cut narrower again to suit them, and cannot be added afterwards. Anyone selling a made-to-measure blind with "no gaps and no light leaks" is describing something that does not exist.

Inside or outside the reveal

Inside is the neat fit: flush in the opening, no hardware on the wall. It costs you those side gaps, and on a short window the rolled or stacked blind eats the top of your daylight. Outside closes the edges and keeps the glass clear, which is why blackout bedrooms usually end up face fixed. It costs you neatness: the blind stands proud, can foul a handle, and needs sound wall to fix into.

Cordless in any room a child uses

This is a policy, not a feature. A looped chain or cord within reach of a small child is a real strangulation hazard, so in any bedroom, nursery or playroom we fit cordless or motorised as standard. We will not install a corded blind in a child's room.

Where blinds beat curtains, and where they lose

They win wherever fabric would get dirty or be in the way: kitchens, where grease and dust wipe off a flat surface but never come out of a curtain; bathrooms, for the humidity and the lack of wall to stack onto; small windows, where a curtain swallows the wall; offices, where glare needs tuning through the day.

They lose on floor-to-ceiling glass, where one wide blind reads industrial and runs those edge gaps the full height of the room, and on heat, because a blind is a thin layer close to the glass with no trapped air behind it. The room-by-room argument is in curtains or blinds.

Room by room

Kitchen and bathroom: roller. Bedroom: roller with side channels, or a roman mounted outside the reveal. Home office: zebra, for glare that moves. Living room: usually curtains, sometimes a blind behind them. Formal dining or a niche: roman. Balcony door: not a blind.

How we work

Blinds are unforgiving of a millimetre: a few out and you get a permanent light gap down one side. So a supervisor visits free, with the fabric books, and every window is measured twice. One written price per finished window within 24 hours, nothing added later, fitted on the date in your contract, not a range, with a one-year mechanical and labour warranty. Any remake caused by our measurement is at our cost. See how it works, or book a free measurement.