What motorisation is

A motorised blind carries a small motor inside the tube the fabric rolls onto. Instead of a chain, the blind takes its instruction from a remote, a wall switch, an app or a schedule. Everything else about the blind is the same: same fabrics, same brackets, same measurements taken in your home.

There is no chain hanging beside the window, which is the reason a lot of families with young children ask about it in the first place.

Battery or hardwired

Battery motors are the common choice on a retrofit. A rechargeable lithium tube runs inside the blind and is topped up with a plug-in charger, usually once or twice a year depending on how often the blind moves. No electrician, no wall chasing, no patching paint.

Hardwired motors run off mains power and suit new builds and renovations, where the cable can be run before the plaster goes on. They never need charging and they are the better answer for very large or very heavy drops.

We size the motor to the blind, not the other way around. A wide blockout roller in a living room and a small blind over a stairwell are not the same job.

Control: remote, app or voice

Every motorised blind we install comes with a handheld remote, and channels can be grouped so one button moves a whole room. Add a hub and the same blinds appear in an app on your phone.

Our motorisation is Apple Home compatible, so blinds sit alongside your lights and climate control rather than in an app of their own. Google Home and Amazon Alexa work the same way. Voice control is genuinely useful in the rooms where the window is behind something — over a kitchen bench, above a stairwell, behind a bed.

Schedules and sensors

This is the part people underestimate. Blinds set to close at 3pm on a western wall keep the afternoon heat out of the room before it arrives, which is a straightforward reduction in what your air conditioner has to do all summer.

Schedules can run to a time, to sunrise and sunset, or to a temperature trigger so the blinds drop when the room hits a set point. Waking up to blinds that have already opened is the feature people talk about, but the heat control is the one that shows up on the bill.

Where it earns its keep

Tall and hard to reach windows. Highlight windows, stairwell voids and anything above a kitchen bench. If a blind needs a ladder, it does not get used.

Whole rooms at once. A run of four or five windows across a living area moves together in a few seconds instead of one chain at a time.

Outdoor blinds and zipscreens. Large outdoor drops are heavy. A motor makes the difference between closing the patio down when the wind turns and deciding it is not worth the effort.

Holiday houses and empty homes. Blinds that keep moving to a schedule make an unoccupied house look occupied.

What it costs

Motorisation is priced per blind and depends on the motor, the drop size and whether you go battery or hardwired. It is an addition to the price of the blind, not a separate product, so the fairest way to look at it is per window rather than per house — and it is common to motorise the windows that are hard to reach and leave the easy ones manual.

We quote it either way at the measure so you can see both numbers side by side before deciding.

Retrofitting existing blinds

In some cases an existing roller can be re-tubed with a motor rather than replaced, if the fabric and brackets are in good condition and the sizing suits. We will tell you honestly at the measure whether that is the cheaper path or whether a new blind is the better value.

Seeing it work

A motorised blind is hard to appreciate from a description. At the free measure we bring a working motor with us, so you can hear how quiet it is and see the speed before you commit to anything.

If you already have a written quote for motorised blinds, bring it in. We will beat it.