Roller Blinds

by Adrian How

We recently installed roller blinds in both our 3rd floor rooms to shut out the sunlight and keep the place cozy in the day. Even though the rooms are unoccupied, we’ve put some hand-me-down furniture from our parents’ place to fill it up and make it liveable. Occasionally, my brother will come and stay over on the weekends to watch Barclay’s Premier League matches or play some mahjong, or both. He’s complained about the glare and warmth from the sunlight that seeps in so we decided that for his sake, and to protect the furniture and flooring from fading, we’d put some shades.

Roller blinds was the obvious choice because they are relatively maintenance free, do not gather dust like curtains and due to the U-shaped windows set up in both the top floor rooms, configuration of curtain rails would’ve been more complex. We opted for perforated roller blinds. We chose the perforated blinds over blackout blinds to still allow some light to pass through to bath the room in the cozy glow. It also helps my brother to be able to distinguish night from day.

The downside to using roller blinds for such a configuration would mean that there are some visible gaps in between the sheets of blind, which can’t really be helped unless we used fabric curtains. All in all, we’re pretty pleased with the roller blinds and we can now sleep sound that the rooms’ are protected from constant and direct sunlight and that my brother won’t be complaining about his sleep being disrupted by the glare from the sun seeping into the room.

For those of you who are considering roller blinds, do contact me (click here) and I can hook you up to a contractor whom I know personally to provide you with very reasonable prices.

I suppose for the sake of illustration of sunlight creeping into the room at midday, I should not have taken the above pic on a cloudy day.

Here’s how it looks with the blinds down. Minimal light still passes through. Very cozy for afternoon siestas.

Without blinds

With blinds. Gap in the middle can’t be helped as each blinds sheet has a maximum width and the windows are pretty darn wide.

Similar blinds for the other room on the 3rd floor.

If you’re looking to furnish only a small area with roller blinds and would rather not custom fit them, then IKEA offers a variety of blinds at very reasonable prices.