[Ad - we were gifted the roller blind in exchange for an honest review]
We live in a modest 2-bedroom maisonette, within a block of flats, it is somewhere we have lived for 15 years now and over the years it has undergone a fair few transformations. We are all about DIY and upcycling and have often gone down the make do and mend route.
Our youngest two children share a bedroom, it has a wide, shallow window which we have struggled to buy blinds for in the past, hence the bodge job (see below) - pretty embarrassing, huh?!
The pull cord had broken, plus we were using a canvas and a parasol to try and block out the light in the corner!
We often went down the route of having 2 blinds next to each other, but over the years they had been broken. With the lighter evenings coming we really needed to get a new blackout roller blind - this time one that covers the whole window. In came Make My Blinds - who custom make your blinds for you, they have a gorgeous range of roller, Venetian and wooden blinds and they are all hand made to your specifications.
Honestly speaking I would have loved some of the wooden blinds with tapes down them, they look just like shutters - but, I need to be practical and a blackout blind is a must in a kids room.
First up I measured the window, it is 240cm in width and we needed a 120cm drop. We looked through the colours, there are an array of choices - literally so many colours, but I decided on the Amor Grey Mist, there are lots of shades of grey to choose from, I went for grey as it is neutral and pretty trendy at the moment. The fabric has a slight texture to the front, with a matt effect on the reverse and it is made of polyester. I was then asked if the blind would be going in the window recess or not, ours is hanging from a wooden baton, on the wall. We were also asked which side we wanted the pull cord on and we went for the right hand side.
Our blind arrived about a week later, it was delivered via courier. My husband installed it very easily, there is a tutorial on the website if you need some tips, but the two fittings were screwed into our wooden baton ( we still need to paint this) - then the blind slotted in very easily. Their blinds also come with a 4 year warranty.
It is a great fit for their window, and wonderful to have a working pull cord again! The blackout fabric works very well indeed, perfect for these lighter evenings and trying to get reluctant children to go to sleep.
Our next plan is to finish decorating! As you can tell my daughter loves to draw and stick her pictures up everywhere - the plan is for a feature wall with some nice wallpaper here eventually.
Overall, we are over the moon with the new blind and I would certainly think about some of the wooden ones for our living room, again the window is very wide, so the one we currently have is from IKEA and although we like the pattern it doesn't fully cover the width.
It was great to order from these guys, their customer service is excellent and it is wonderful to finally find something that fits.