Eyelids for our loft windows - Bloc Blinds window blinds
Another thing we finally got around to this spring was choosing and installing window blinds for the loft.
The sun in the loft is super strong, which is great if you're a lemon tree, but not if you're an old comic book, piece of furniture, paperwork or anything else really.
Everything in the loft has bleached big time and the Ikea shelving units have turned yellow in varying shades.
So it was finally time for window blinds.
A friend of ours works for Velux, and we would have loved to get their multi-function blinds - the ones that are either blackout or shades, depending on which way you pull them up or down. I think they're called Velux duo blackout blinds.
But after a lot of deciphering of the code numbers on the window frames, it turns out that - of course - we don't have Velux windows. They're made by a company called Roto, and they are - of course - sizes that they don't make any more.
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The sun in the loft is super strong, which is great if you're a lemon tree, but not if you're an old comic book, piece of furniture, paperwork or anything else really.
Everything in the loft has bleached big time and the Ikea shelving units have turned yellow in varying shades.
So it was finally time for window blinds.
A friend of ours works for Velux, and we would have loved to get their multi-function blinds - the ones that are either blackout or shades, depending on which way you pull them up or down. I think they're called Velux duo blackout blinds.
But after a lot of deciphering of the code numbers on the window frames, it turns out that - of course - we don't have Velux windows. They're made by a company called Roto, and they are - of course - sizes that they don't make any more.
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After much searching, I found a company called Bloc Blinds, which seems to specialise in roof windows, and it offered Roto sizes as well. Cost was about £100 per blind, which wasn't cheap, but I felt rich on the day that I ordered. They consist of a sturdy aluminium frame (we went for the plain colour) and the blind cassette at the top. So far, so good. Here's a before and after.
You can see that the blinds are not fully blackout (that would have not really worked for us, as we just want to protect whatever is in the loft from the sun, rather than keeping it dark and turning it into a home cinema).
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| The sliding mechanism |
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| The blind runners are screwed into the window frame. A bit crude, but it works. Just that they didn't fit so well, so I scratched the frame. I was too impatient to wait to call customer support - maybe I was missing a trick, but they're in place nicely now. |
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| The blind fully closed. |
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| You can just about see the Hart Hill water tower. |
Really happy with the overall outcome. The little lemon tree on the right still gets plenty of sunlight, but what's in the middle of the room is now in elegant shade.
