Choose the covering for what the room has to do, not for what looked good in a showroom. Light control, privacy and heat load are the three things that decide it, and they change from one window to the next.
Start with what the room does
Walk through the house and ask one thing at every window: what is the problem here? A west-facing lounge has a heat problem. A front bedroom on a busy street has a privacy problem and a light problem at the same time, and they need different answers.
Write it down window by window. Note which way the glass faces, whether anyone can see in from the footpath or a neighbour’s upstairs window, and whether the room is used in the middle of the day. That short list will do more for your decision than any brochure.
Living rooms and lounges
Lounges usually want light through the day and privacy after dark, which is why double roller blinds turn up in so many of them. A double bracket carries two blinds on the one fitting, a sunscreen on the back roller and a blockout on the front. You run the sunscreen all day and drop the blockout at night.
Sunscreen fabrics are sold by openness factor, normally somewhere between 1% and 10%. A 3% fabric keeps most of the glare and most of the view in from outside, while still letting you see out. A 10% is far more open, so the outlook is better and you feel more of the sun on your arm.
If the lounge opens onto a deck or courtyard, what you hang outside matters as much as what you hang inside. Outdoor blinds and awnings stop the sun before it reaches the glass. An interior blind can only deal with heat once it is already in the room.
Bedrooms need to go properly dark
Blockout roller blinds are the workhorse here, but be clear about what blockout means. The fabric blocks the light. The gap around the blind does not.
A roller mounted inside the window reveal always leaves a thin line of light down each side, because the blind has to be cut narrower than the opening to run freely. For a shift worker or a baby’s room, mount outside the reveal instead, with about 150mm of overlap past the glass at the sides and above. A cassette or a timber pelmet closes the gap at the top where light spills over the roll.
Blockout curtains with a proper lining get you to the same place and take the hard edge off the room. Plenty of bedrooms end up with both, a blockout roller for sleeping and sheer curtains for the daytime.
Kitchens, bathrooms and laundries
Steam, cooking grease and splashes rule out most soft fabrics. Aluminium and PVC venetian blinds wipe down and do not hold moisture, which is why they keep going in these rooms long after fabric would have gone off.
Keep the blind well clear of the sink and the cooktop. Over a kitchen window that swings open, a roller face fixed above the architrave clears the sash better than one squeezed into a shallow reveal. Timber is the one to avoid in a bathroom, because repeated wetting eventually lifts the finish.
Home offices and west-facing glass
West-facing windows carry the heaviest afternoon heat load in a Sydney house, and glare on a screen is the complaint we hear most often. A sunscreen roller handles the glare without making you work in the dark, and you keep the view.
If the office still cooks with the blind down, the heat is coming through the glass itself rather than past the fabric. Something on the outside of the window, or shutters with louvres you can angle, will do more than swapping one interior fabric for another.
Getting the mount and the measurements right
Reveal depth decides whether an inside mount is even on the table. A slimline roller needs roughly 40mm of depth to sit clear of the architrave. A cassette or a double roller wants closer to 100mm. Timber venetians and shutters need more again, and a shallow reveal quietly pushes you to a face fix.
Measure the reveal at three heights, because brickwork in an older Sydney house is rarely square, then work off the narrowest figure. Inside-mount blinds get a small deduction so nothing rubs, usually in the order of 10mm across the width. Getting that wrong by a couple of millimetres is the difference between a blind that runs sweetly and one that scuffs every time.
If you would rather work through the house with someone who does this every day, book a free measure and quote. We will go room by room, tell you what we would put at each window and why, and take the measurements properly while we are there.
Common questions
Do I need the same blind in every room?
No, and most houses end up with a mix. Blockout in the bedrooms, sunscreen where you want the view, and something wipeable in the wet areas is a common combination. Keeping the fabric colour consistent is what makes a mix look deliberate from the street.
What openness factor should I pick for a sunscreen blind?
Around 3% is the usual choice for a living room, because it cuts glare and daytime visibility from outside while you can still see out. Go more open, closer to 10%, only where the view matters more than the glare.
Can I have blinds and curtains on the same window?
Yes, and it works well in bedrooms and lounges. A roller handles light and privacy day to day, and the curtain softens the room and helps with heat at night. You need enough wall above the window for both fittings, so it is worth checking before you order.