Types of Blinds and Curtains Explained — and Which Room Each One Suits

There are eight kinds of window covering worth knowing about, and most homes end up with two or three of them. This is the plain version: what each one does, where it falls down, and which room we'd put it in. Every photo is a real Australian home fitted with our product.

If you'd rather see them all at once, the inspiration gallery filters by room and by product. Otherwise, top to bottom, roughly in price order.

Roller blinds

Charcoal sunscreen rollers half down. You can still see the garden; the glare and most of the heat stay outside.

A single sheet of fabric on a tube, raised and lowered with a chain or a motor. The plainest blind there is, which is why it's in more Australian windows than anything else. The fabric does all the work: blockout for bedrooms and media rooms, sunscreen where you want to keep the view and lose the glare, light filtering for a soft glow with daytime privacy.

Good at: darkness (blockout), heat (sunscreen), tight fits, low cost, quick DIY installs. Not so good at: a bare window when it's up — the roll sits at the top and the glass is fully exposed — and it's either open or closed at whatever height you leave it; there's no tilting for half-privacy.

Rooms: bedrooms, kids' rooms, home offices, kitchens, bathrooms (in a PVC or screen fabric), rentals. Honestly, anywhere. Start at the roller blind page, or read the roller blinds buying guide first.

Double roller blinds

A double roller behind a sheer at the Abercrombie house. Two tubes on one bracket: a light-filter at the front, a blockout behind.

Two rollers on one bracket: a sunscreen or light-filter at the front, a blockout behind. Day: filter down, view kept. Night: blockout down. It's the answer for a living room that faces the street, or a bedroom you also work in.

The trade-off is depth. A double bracket sits further off the wall than a single, so check your recess is deep enough or plan a face fit. Costs roughly what two singles cost, because it is two blinds. Double roller blinds.

Roman blinds

A linen roman behind sheers in a formal living room. Romans fold into soft horizontal pleats as they rise.

A flat fabric panel with rods sewn across it, so it folds up in neat horizontal pleats instead of rolling. Softer and more "furnished" than a roller, and it takes proper decorator fabrics. Our made-to-measure roman blinds run on a cord-and-cleat or chain system and come in blockout and light-filtering fabrics.

Good at: looking like a design decision rather than a hardware one; bedrooms and living rooms where you want fabric texture without full curtains. Not so good at: wet rooms, very wide windows (the fabric gets heavy), and budgets — a roman costs more than a roller in the same fabric because there's a lot more sewing in it.

Rooms: bedrooms, living rooms, studies, window seats. Roman blinds.

Venetian blinds

Visionwood venetian, woodgrain — our render on a real Better Built bedroom

50mm aluminium venetian in black — our render on a real bathroom

Horizontal slats you tilt for light and privacy at the same time, then pull up out of the way. We make four: Purewood (real timber, warm, for living rooms and bedrooms), Visionwood (a PVC timber-look that shrugs off steam, so it's the one for bathrooms and kitchens), 25mm slimline aluminium (fits inside shallow frames, good for offices and small windows) and 50mm aluminium (bolder slat, more view when tilted).

Good at: fine control — angle the slats up to bounce light onto the ceiling, down to kill glare while keeping the view. Not so good at: full darkness (light leaks between slats), dusting, and heavy weights on big windows. A tilted venetian in a bathroom is one of the few coverings that gives you privacy and ventilation at once — see the bathroom blinds guide.

Rooms: bathrooms and kitchens (Visionwood or aluminium), offices, living rooms (Purewood).

Vertical blinds

Vertical blind in an oatmeal fabric on a living room slider — our render on a real room.

Fabric or PVC vanes hanging from a track, rotated with a wand or chain and drawn to one side. They're the practical answer for sliding doors and very wide windows, because the vanes stack neatly to the side instead of rolling up into a fat tube, and they don't care how wide the opening is.

Good at: sliding doors, wide living-room windows, rentals, budgets. Not so good at: bedrooms that need to be dark (light leaks between vanes), and the "office" reputation, though modern fabric vanes in a soft neutral look nothing like the 1990s. Vertical blinds, and our guide to where verticals still make sense.

Panel glide blinds

Panel glide in charcoal on a bedroom slider, panels stacked to the left — our render on a real room.

Wide flat fabric panels — usually 3 to 5 of them — that slide along a multi-channel track and stack behind each other. Think of it as a vertical blind with the vanes replaced by a few big panels. Cleaner lines, and it takes the same sunscreen and blockout fabrics as our rollers, so you can match a panel glide on the slider to the rollers on the windows in the same room.

Good at: sliding doors and room dividers in a modern house. Not so good at: fully clearing the glass — even stacked, the panels cover the width of one panel. Panel blinds.

Curtains

S-fold sheers on a ceiling-mounted track. This is the look most people are asking for right now, and it works with a blockout roller behind it.

Fabric hung from a track, floor to ceiling if the room allows it. Ours are made in Australia with an S-fold (also called wave fold) heading on a ceiling- or wall-mounted track, in sheer or blockout fabrics. Sheers soften light and give daytime privacy; a blockout curtain does the night job. Double curtains put both on one bracket so you don't have to choose.

Good at: making a room feel finished; hiding ugly window frames; insulation, because the fabric hangs off the glass and traps air; going floor to ceiling on a two-metre-plus window without the weight problems blinds have. Not so good at: wet areas, tight budgets, and small kitchen windows where fabric gets in the way of the bench.

Rooms: living rooms, bedrooms, dining rooms. The most common combination in the homes we photograph is a sheer curtain in front with a blockout roller behind — we wrote a whole guide on layering sheers over rollers. Curtains.

Plantation shutters

PVC plantation shutters on a bay window in Oak & Orange's Dream Home 6 — no cords, and they wipe clean.

Hinged panels with wide adjustable louvres, fixed into a frame around the window. Shutters are the permanent option: they're part of the joinery once they're in, they have no cords at all, and PVC ones don't mind steam or salt air. We make a PVC plantation shutter and an Australian-made PVC shutter — the product page tells you which is which.

Good at: bathrooms, coastal homes, kids' rooms (no cords), street-facing windows, adding value at sale time. Not so good at: darkness — louvres always leak a little light at the edges, so a bedroom shutter often wants a blockout roller or curtain behind it — and cost, which is the highest of anything on this page. Install is the most involved too; measure twice.

Motorised anything

Not a type of blind so much as an option on most of them. Rollers, double rollers and curtains can all be motorised with a battery motor (Somfy or Acmeda Automate, recharged every few months depending on use) or a hard-wired one on a new build. You get a remote, an app, scheduling, and no chain — which matters more in a kid's room than anywhere. Details on the motorisation page and in our motorisation guide.

A Somfy remote and a white motorised roller: up, down, and a favourite position on the middle button.

Which one goes where

How to actually decide

Everything on this page is made to measure in Australia and covered by our five-year warranty.