Blinds for Conservatories

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What are blinds good for?

Decor - yes: Blinds can improve the look and feel of your conservatory significantly. In the evening especially they take away that feeling of being 'watched' through the dark glass and make the room feel more like an addition to the home. Therefore, they can be an aesthetic improvement to the conservatory - simply looking great.

Direct Sunlight - yes: They are also useful for reducing the effect of UV on other furnishings such as sofa's, chairs and tables or whatever else you have in your conservatory.

Heat Build-up - no: I would say from experience though that the one thing they are poor at is reducing the heat build up in the room. Of course it will depend on the location of your sunroom with respect to the sun but whilst they are good at keeping out direct sunlight I have found my blinds to be ineffective at stopping solar gain. They may reduce the temperature over having none, but its not enough and you may as well better spend your money on air conditioning or solar coatings than blinds for heat build up reasons alone.

Roller

These are like the blinds you will have in your bathroom or kitchen. They open and close by un-rolling from the top usually operated by a cord at the side.   

Roman

This type of blind are rolled or folded up at the bottom as the blind is raised.

Pinoleum

This type of blind are typically made of wooden slats. They are in fact a type of roman blind.

Pleated

This type of blind are folded up like a fan. They are very popular and can give a modern look to conservatories. I would say they are probably the most attractive form of blind though they are probably the most expensive as well. Pleated blinds are usually on wire guides which helps them keep their shape when they are being open and closed. On a personal note the ones on the front of our Edwardian conservatory roof do not open very easily and when open look un-tidy due to the shape of the roof. 

Conservatory blinds: Personal experience

You don't have to use one type of blind in every window/roof panel in the conservatory. For my particular install we went for pleated in the roof space (which look great) and roller for the windows (much cheaper). The pleated have guiding wires on them which means they fit the Edwardian trapezoidal roof style, they are tidy and they stay close to the roof panels (whereas roller blinds would have hung down a little). The roller blinds cover a large window area relatively cheaply. The roller blinds do knock with the windows open in a breeze but its hardly irritating. Now we didn't come up with this idea but rather the conservatory blind salesman suggested it (he also runs the company). Good price, good advice and not pushy - sold!

I would also add that I should have tried to supply and fit the roller blinds myself as its not hard at all. The pleated roof blinds are a specialist job and I'm really glad I didn't try it. Overall they are a good addition to the conservatory but do not cool it enough and we now have air conditioning and two fans in there as well!

A safety tip for parents is that the cords that come with roller blinds can be quite long and they dangle down to the window ledge in the conservatory. My children like to shuffle along the low ledge and play with the cords. Of course a potential hazard is that they could fall off the ledge (only 2ft down) but get snagged in the cord and well, you guess the rest. I try to remember to tie them up after use or simply keep the kids out of the room.

How much will they cost?

The cheapest price I found on the web started at £680 for even a postage stamp size conservatory blind. This included at 'survey' of the conservatory, measuring it, fitting the blinds and a 5 year manufacturers warranty. On this particluar site there didn't seem to be a linear relationship between price and blind area or length (at least not one I could see) but typical prices were a 3m x 3m conservatory costing just under £1000 to put any type of blind into. A 5m x 5m set of blinds set cost £2200 again with any type of blind (not electric though). Whether this online quotation service would be honoured or whether there would be some terms and conditions which became obvious at the 'survey' I don't know - but it gives you an idea of the lowest price you can expect to pay.

A second site rather than have an online quotation calculator listed several designs of conservatory along with typical dimensions and pricing for standard blinds for you conservatory. For example for a

• Lean to conservatory, 4m x 2.5m = £941
• Victorian conservatory, 3m x 3m = £1248
• Edwardian conservatory, 3m x 3m = £1350
• P-shaped conservatory, 5m x 3m = £1950

Again these prices are estimates. Not a huge difference in price to the previous quotations, e.g. prices starting at about £1000 rising to about £2000.

Prices valid early 2007 

As can be seen from the above table the pricing for individual blinds is higher than before but gives some idea of the effect of the type of blind has on the actual cost to install it. Note the prices for the blinds in this case are for the roof blinds only. Ouch.

Beware though. There are some companies that will try and sell you blinds for a truly horrendous price. I got nervous when the price I was quoted for some additional motors on the blinds (£500 each) exceeded what I expected to pay for the blinds themselves. In the end I paid about £1700 for pleated roof and roller window blinds included fitting in a 3.5x3.5m conservatory compared to the first quote of £7000.

Installing some form of blinds in your conservatory is an expensive home improvement and can make all the difference between your conservatory being a valued addition to your home, or just a store for junk and a drying area for clothes.

by Jonathan Pearson