Which blind belongs in a bedroom, where the light really gets in
– and the windows where we would tell you not to use one
Almost every bedroom blind conversation starts in the same place: the client wants the room dark. What follows is usually a discussion about fabric, when fabric is rarely the problem.
Blockout fabric blocks light. That part is easy. What decides whether your bedroom actually goes dark is what happens at the edges of the blind – and that is worth understanding before you choose anything, because most of it is decided at measuring stage and cannot be changed afterwards.
A roller blind fitted inside the window reveal has to be narrower than the opening in order to run. That clearance is small, but light finds it, and against a bright morning it reads as two bright vertical lines down the sides of the window.
There is a product answer – side channels, which enclose the edges of the blind and close the gap almost entirely. We can fit them, but we rarely suggest them, because they are visually heavy and most clients do not like how they look once they are up.
The alternative is to mount the blind above the reveal on the wall and back-roll the fabric, so the roll turns the other way and the blind hangs closer to the wall rather than standing off it. That cuts the bleed down considerably. It also leaves the tube and brackets on show, so it is often paired with a pelmet across the top to cover the mechanism and close the light gap over the head of the blind at the same time.
A Roman blind has no equivalent fix. There is no channel option and no back-roll. A Roman will bleed light at the sides, and there is nothing to be done about it.
Here is the part nobody tells you, and it is worth saying plainly: a great many people are entirely happy with that. Light bleed at the edges is only a problem if it bothers you. Plenty of bedrooms are perfectly comfortable with a blind alone, and if you sleep well now, a thin line of light at six in the morning may be a complete non-issue.
But if you genuinely want the room dark – if you are a light sleeper, if you work nights, if the room faces east – a blind on its own will not get you there.
This is our standard recommendation for a bedroom where darkness actually matters. The blind handles the daytime; the curtain handles the dark. A blockout curtain with proper returns to the wall and generous overlap in the centre closes the edges in a way no blind can, because the fabric wraps back rather than stopping at a gap.
Two decisions follow from that, and both surprise people.
First, if you are pairing with a curtain, use a roller rather than a Roman. A Roman stacks a substantial amount of fabric at the top of the window, and behind a curtain that bulk has nowhere to go – you end up with two layers competing for the same space at the head of the window.
Second, and this is the one clients almost always get wrong: if there is a blockout curtain, the roller behind it should be sunscreen, not blockout. A blockout roller behind a blockout curtain is doing nothing. The curtain is already delivering the darkness. What the blind should be doing is the job the curtain cannot – cutting glare and heat during the day while you still have a view out, and giving you daytime privacy with the curtains open. Specifying a blockout roller blind in that position is paying for a function you already have and losing one you do not.
There is a third reason to pair, and it has nothing to do with light. A blind does very little about noise, whatever it is made of – the fabric is thin, it sits flat against the glass, and there is not enough of it to matter. If the room faces a main road or a rail line, that is worth knowing before you spend the money, because the treatment that darkens the room and the treatment that quietens it are the same one. Our noise reducing curtains page sets out what fabric genuinely does about sound and what it does not.
This gets decided on site and cannot be undone, and the answer is different for each type of blind.
Roller blinds go inside the reveal about nine times out of ten. Not because it performs better – it does not, as above – but because a roller mounted on the wall shows its tube and its brackets, and it never looks flush or fitted. Almost nobody likes it. So the light bleed is generally accepted as the price of the neater look, unless the room is one where darkness is the priority and the back-roll and pelmet approach is used instead.
Roman blinds are the opposite – roughly four out of five go on the wall rather than in the reveal. Two reasons. The stack sits above the glass rather than inside it, so when the blind is up you keep more of your window and more of your view. And a Roman fitted inside a reveal needs a small clearance at each side to operate, which is visible; mounted on the wall, the blind simply covers the opening and those gaps are not part of the picture.
If the room needs to be dark, a Roman is lined with blockout. That is not really a decision – it is the specification.
There are exceptions, and they depend on what else the window already has. Where a window is already protected externally, or where the room genuinely does not need darkness, a soft Roman in a sheer fabric can be a beautiful thing in a bedroom – all the softness of fabric with light coming through it.
Bedrooms with more than one opening often end up with more than one answer. On one job we specified a blockout roller on a small window and on a balcony door, a soft Roman over the main window, and a sheer curtain across the door. Four openings, three treatments, one room – because the openings were doing different jobs.
If there is one thing to take from this, it is this.
Roller blinds and corner windows do not work. Two windows meeting at a corner leave a gap where the blinds meet that no roller can close, and because the corner runs the full height of the window, that gap admits far more light than the ordinary side clearance does. It is the single biggest disappointment we are called about.
A double roller blind in a corner is worse again. Two blinds on one bracket means a deeper assembly, which means the gap at the corner is bigger still.
For a corner window, use curtains – which can be run around the corner on a bent track and closed to meet properly – or [cellular honeycomb blinds](https://hayinteriors.com.au/blinds-perth/cellular-honeycomb-blinds/), which sit closer into the reveal and leak considerably less at the edges. This is worth raising before you order anything, because it is not obvious from a showroom and it is expensive to discover afterwards.
These usually get different answers, and sensibly so.
A main bedroom normally gets a curtain, because it is the room where darkness matters most and where the client is most willing to spend on the look.
A guest room is more often a blind alone, and frequently a roller. Light bleed is far less of a concern in a room used a few nights a year, and the budget usually goes where it is used daily.
One pattern worth knowing, because it catches people out at quoting stage: clients almost never want to mix blind types across a house. If honeycomb blinds go in one room, honeycomb tends to go everywhere. That is not a technical rule, it is simply how people feel about their homes – and it is worth thinking about before you specify something unusual in one bedroom, because you may end up wanting it in all of them.
If you want to open and close from bed or from your phone, yes.
Motorised blinds earn their place in a bedroom for straightforward reasons. You can darken the room without getting up. You can operate them while you are out of the house, which matters for security and for heat. And where a bedroom has several windows, they all move at once instead of one at a time.
The cost is real but far lower than most people assume, and it is the sort of thing clients tell us afterwards they would have done from the start.
Two situations, and we will say so at the consultation.
If your aim is genuinely full darkness, do not rely on a blind. Not a roller, not a Roman, not with side channels. Use curtains, or use a blind with curtains over them, and accept that the darkness is coming from the curtain.
And if the look you want is soft and luxurious, do not choose a roller blind. A roller is flat, clean and practical, and it is the right answer for a great many windows – but it will never give you the softness of sewn fabric. If that is what you are after, a Roman or curtains will get you there and a roller will quietly disappoint you every time you walk into the room.
Decide first how dark the room actually needs to be, and be honest about it – a lot of bedrooms do not need full darkness and a blind alone is perfectly good. If it does need to be dark, plan for a curtain and let the blind do the daytime work. Keep rollers away from corner windows. And settle the reveal-or-wall question before anything is made.
Our post on bedroom window treatments covers the curtain side of the same room, and for children’s rooms – where the darkness question is at its hardest, because the sleep happens in daylight – see children’s curtains.
A free in-home consultation settles all of it. Annie will look at the room at the hour the light is worst, tell you what will actually darken it, and say plainly if a blind is the wrong answer for that window. We make and fit blinds and curtains in homes across Perth, from east-facing bedrooms in Mount Lawley to corner windows in riverfront apartments.
It depends on how dark you need the room. If you want genuine darkness, no blind will get you all the way there on its own – the light comes in around the edges rather than through the fabric, so we would pair a blind with blockout curtains. If you are comfortable with a little light at the edges, a blockout roller blind or a blockout-lined Roman blind works well and looks neat.
The fabric does its job completely. The gaps do not. A roller blind fitted inside the reveal must be narrower than the opening in order to run, and a Roman blind needs clearance at the sides too, so light enters down both edges. Side channels can close that gap on a roller but they are visually heavy and most clients decline them. For a genuinely dark bedroom, curtains over the blind are the reliable answer.
Roller blinds usually go inside the reveal – around nine out of ten – because a roller mounted on the wall shows its tube and brackets and never looks flush. Roman blinds usually go outside, around four out of five, because the stack then sits above the glass rather than eating into the window, and the operating gaps at the sides are hidden.
Yes, and it is what we recommend where darkness matters. One thing to get right: if the curtain is blockout, the blind behind it should be a sunscreen rather than a blockout. The curtain is already giving you the darkness, so the blind’s job is daytime glare, heat and privacy – and a blockout roller cannot do that job.
Roller blinds are not. Two blinds meeting at a corner leave a gap that runs the full height of the window and lets in far more light than an ordinary side clearance, and a double roller makes it worse because the assembly is deeper. For corner windows we would use curtains on a bent track, or cellular honeycomb blinds, which sit closer into the reveal.
If you want to operate them from bed or from your phone, yes. They also let you open and close the house while you are out, and where a bedroom has several windows they all move together. The cost is lower than most people expect.
