Posted By Laura in Childrens, Featured, In the Home, Just for You, Kid's rooms | 1 comment

So we had new walls, and before we had a new floor we wanted to get as much of the messy work done as we could. But we couldn’t do the shelves util the bed was up and we saw how they’d fit around it. And we couldn’t do the bed till we had the carpet… so we got on with upcycling the rest of the furniture, painting the shelves in readiness, and realised we could fit the blind too.

Previously she’d had big thick (green of course!) curtains at the window. But they not only took up a lot of light as they bunched either side of the window, they also hung out into the room. And when your room is less than 6′ wide, every inch matters, believe me. They were just… In the way.

So we thought for a while, and decided that a blind was the way to go (though if you’re actually looking for made-to-measure curtains, there are some brill companies offering them online).

Hillarys had been in touch and asked about working with us, so we took them up on their offer and trawled their web-blinds site for something suitable. Hillarys run a great service where they visit you and deal with the whole issue of measuring and fitting for you. But if you’re working on a budget, then measuring and fitting for yourself is obviously the way to go. So Hillarys Blinds set up web-blinds to allow you to do just that – you measure, you choose, you order, and everything arrives in a neat box for you to fit it yourself. It’s a brilliant idea, and saves a lot of your budget.

Now, if I’m honest, I was concerned about the heat-loss factor of a blind; how could they compete with thick curtains?

But then I spotted that they have a range of ‘ecopleat’ thermal blinds, which seemed like the obvious answer to the heat loss issue. Made to measure (also an issue for us, as her window is very wide), they can fit inside the window frame. Which of course means there’s absolutely no loss of space at all. Genius solution. And with the concertina shape the heat pockets would provide a really nice thermal layer against the window. Her room is one of the warmest in the house anyway as it runs over the hot pipes, so this seemed like all our window-shaped issues solved.

We chose the Pearl colouring – there are lots of colour options (no pale pink though), and we chose what we hoped would be a warm shade of white.

We measured carefully (twice, actually, just to be sure) and tapped in the size we needed; 150cm W x 97cm drop. Try finding THAT ‘off the shelf’.

The magic elves at web-blind then whisked up the blind to the exact size we needed,  and hey presto, the blind arrived in a box with all the fittings.

Putting it up couldn’t have been easier… Two clips attached to the window recess, and then the blind simply clips in.

But once it was up we were super-unimpressed. The thing just didn’t run up and down properly, it hung half way and refused to glide, there were messy dangling strings at the bottom… Ugly and totally impractical.

Then the husband looked again at the instructions, took it off the wall and hung it back on.

*cough* The right way up…

Amazingly, it works beautifully that way up! And what d’you know? It fits like a charm in her window space, too! Fully unfurled it drops to rest neatly right on her window sill, and when it’s pulled up it’s a matter of a couple of inches deep.
It’s neatly tucked away during the day, and looks beautiful when it’s down at night. As well as a thermal construction, it’s also a blackout blind: it blocks nearly all the light, and I can tell it’s easily going to be as warm as her flappy curtains were. And it’s not a hard shiny plastic – the thermal properties include a lovely soft-touch fabric-cardboard texture. Whatever it is, it’s lovely.

And with one lesson on how to work it, Bear confidently zips it up and down as she needs it.

We really really love this blind! It’s made such an impact – the whole window seems bigger and brighter without all the excess fabric ( I did run up some fake curtains and a pelmet to stop the window feeling too bare and minimalist for a small girl’s room) either side, and the room feels higher without the curtain rail breaking the lines.

All I want to do now is find some really tiny silver stars and stick them randomly into the folds of the blind so that when it is down it looks a little sparkly for her in the evening.

The made to order Ecopleat (Blackout) Pearl Pleated Blind from Web-blinds would currently cost us £95.40, and it’s worth every penny. It’s great quality, simplicity itself to hang, and a perfect solution for a child’s room. We’ll definitely be replacing the curtains in the boys rooms when we get to redecorating theirs.