How to curtain a newbuild from scratch?

[ThePug]

We’re (hopefully) exchanging on a newbuild in the next couple of weeks with completion due pre Christmas. We’re moving from a 2 bed period flat to a 5 bed detached house and the sheer number of windows and doors (inc big bay windows and two sets of bifold doors) that need curtains/blinds is stressing me out! None of our current curtains will be suitable to reuse.

We’re rubbish at DIY (and have 2 small children, plus dog) so I’m hoping to get somebody to install the curtain poles, curtains and blinds for us. The developers have said we can’t do anything before completion so going to have to try to book someone to come soon after. And I’m therefore thinking it’ll be cheaper to get them all done at the same time.

Just wondering whether I’d be better going to a national firm like Hillary’s or a local curtain maker with presumably separate handyman to fit the poles? Or go to ikea/Dunelm etc and hope they have suitable sizes then just pay someone to put them up?

I also have zero idea how much to budget for this - I want to do it once, nicely rather than buy cheaply and replace but equally don’t need luxury super expensive fabrics.

Has anyone done similar and can give any advice?

We had Hillary’s round to quote for our whole house many years ago. It came to about £1k for 10/12 windows, even choosing the cheapest styles and fabrics, which was way out of our budget.

We went to Ikea and bought cheapie cheap ones for about £120 total and fitted them ourselves.

The next week we had a call from Hillary’s offering us a 50% discount!

So if you do go with them or someone similar, don’t take their first price

Have you got the sizes? I'd go to charity shops first til you've got a better idea if how you'd like the rooms to look. That way it isn't such a huge outlay at an expensive time and you can upgrade bit by bit.
There's always loads in all the charity shops locally

As someone living in a new build for over a year, you don't have to do it all at once. You can do just basic blinds on core windows for privacy. I haven't had anything on my kitchen windows yet, nor my landing. 1st day we just did essential ones like bedrooms in use and some cheap curtains for privacy in living room. Glad I didn't spend much as i still haven't made lots of decisions on decor (we haven't painted for 1st year due to developers coming back to make 1 year fixes and I'm not wasting F&B!) Plus now I'm making a lot myself.

Re the bi-fold doors - you might want to see if perfect fit blinds would be an option as they fit onto the actual glass panels. We have them on french doors and they’re brilliant - no billowing curtains to contend with. John Lewis do made to measure curtains as well as ready made. We have wooden slatted blinds on a lot of our windows fitted in the recess rather than above which looks neater. A local blind company was a much cheaper option than Hillary’s.

One idea is to get a load of net wires and buy a net curtain for each window - Dunelm sell loads of different designs and you can cut them to size in store and only buy what you need. Then at least you have privacy while you decide on colour etc for curtains or blinds

Thanks for all the tips!
Yes I’ve seen perfect fit blinds for the bifolds and think we’ll go for them.
We won’t be doing any decorating for at least a year so I was planning on getting nice curtains so it still looked homely. We’ve had 10 years of parents’ offcasts in our current flat so am looking forward to choosing our own, just wasn’t sure on most cost effective yet faff-free ways we do this.

Am going to look at the plans to see if they have window sizes on tonight.

Local companies might be cheaper our local is 5 windows (decently large sizes) for £99 for blinds, once they’re up you could get ikea/shop bought curtains and a handy man or maybe even a handy family member to help show you the ropes. (Much handier if eventually you decide you want xyz instead)

We fitted all our blinds and curtains ourselves, blinds fortunately only needed “made to measure” for one room. And the rest were off the shelf.

I've bought curtains from Tuiss before and they were great and cheaper than John Lewis. I think they've rebranded now but if you search it should come up.

We just put cheap roller blinds up (adjustable ones bought from Amazon) and did each room when we could afford it.

I think one of my concerns is wrecking the walls / plasterboard by not using the right fixings etc if we went for something cheap/temporary ourselves.

Have a look at web blinds and order roman blinds for the bedrooms with blackout lining. They’re super easy to fit, just 2 or 3 clips at the top. I have some lovely roman blinds in Alberta Linen, they look much better than the pictures and cost a fraction of the price of bespoke made blinds. They look fab outside the recess and dress the room really well.

You can buy temporary paper blinds which stick up - you could at least get those for the bedroom windows.

I'm not sure where you're based (I could've missed it in your post) but we used a company called Gemini Blinds for our new build. They cover the north west and we're really flexible. We found a show home of our house and had them measure the windows there for a rough price, picked the blinds etc we wanted and then they came when we got the keys and had them fitted within a few weeks. We paid just short of £500 for our three bedroom house including patio doors, kitchen and the loft (normal window and two sky lights), all fitted and not their cheapest ranges!

Worth a call if you're up north!

Oh wow summer shine that sounds a great price, I was worrying I might need a budget 10 times that! Sadly we’re in the South West.

Mixingitall thaklnks! Will have a look. Definitely need blackouts as have a 1 and 3 year old who like to wake early.

Putting up curtain poles and blinds is not difficult! Have you not got any friends or family who could give you instruction/a helping hand? Learning to do minor things like this around your house is going to save you a lot of money in the long run.
I wouldn't use Hilary's personally - I have heard quite a lot of criticism re their costings and fitting skills.
Dunelm is excellent for curtains, poles and blinds - plenty of choice.

I used online suppliers for our new build. 247 blinds/curtains, and I forget the name of the place for poles but it was something like poles direct. V happy with both for made to measure - probably won’t last a lifetime but am now three years in and they still look good. You’ll still have to find someone to fit them but it’s half the battle.

Sorry, unlike everyone else I think you should always buy the best you can afford. No one takes any notice of cheap carpet but take time to choose and have your curtains made to fit your windows. Cheap, poorly fitting curtains completely ruin a room. Find a good curtain maker/designer. Worth every penny.

We did flat sheets on the bedroom windows at first, then did them as we figured out the styles and colours we wanted for each room.

I used dunelm for a large bay window. They came out with fabric books, I choose, they measured and came back and fitted. Was fairly quick and not too expensive (can't remember how much now, few years back). Paid extra for curtain rail (fitted to bay) and fitting though.

I thought it was a good service.

We did our entire newbuild with blinds from Blinds2Go. Ordered them ready for completion day. OH put them up in a few hours.

DH and I are complete novice DIY'ers, but we managed to stick up some curtain rails in our new build. If you're in doubt YouTube it- it's handy to know these things if you're going to do any similar jobs like putting up shelves,
mirrors or pictures.

We also used a local blind company for roman blinds in some rooms once finances allowed, and their service included measuring and fitting. The last one is finally getting fitted on Friday, two years after we moved in, and I can't wait!

I would do it in two batches as it will be hard to make decisions on them all at once (at least it would be for me).

Batch 1) is your bedroom and kids’ bedrooms (although see my idea below) and any regularly used guest room or bathroom needing privacy. Batch 2) is anything else, especially downstairs. You may even find you don’t need curtains on eg the bifolds or bay. Or you might decide you want shutters or window film instead.

For the kids’ rooms as you have early wakers I really recommend magnetic blackout blinds available from amazon or ebay (called something like nighttime anytime) or there is a velcro equivalent available too. You have to measure and cut them but it’s really not a big deal. Then you can get decorative roman or roller blinds or curtains for over the top (and you can take your time choosing those). The magnetic or velcro ones are truly blackout, no gaps round the sides letting the sun in, unlike roman and roller blinds.

For your room I would agree with using a sheet temporarily so you have more time to choose what you want, especially if you are getting made to measure. Especially as it’s winter so you don’t have light issues.

I would not order anything based on the window sizes on plans!! Measure the actual windows.

I ordered blackout blinds on rush from Blinds2Go for our bedrooms (the most important bits!) which came 2 days after completion. I'm competent and comfortable at putting them up but had I not been I'd have bought a couple of hours of work from someone on Handy or similar.

Have a word in the sales office. My OH bought a new build earlier this year and the lovely lady gave him the number of a local curtain/blind maker who did a superb job. The advantage of using someone who has done other houses in the same estate was that he knew the window sizes and all sorts so made the whole process really quick.

Your developer will likely allow someone access to measure up. Is there nobody in your family thats handy? We bought a new build this year, whilst DH was fitting floors on moving day my dad put our curtains up for us so we at some privacy and then we ordered our blinds from Blinds2go which DH fitted. For 9 windows I think it was around £550.

If you're doing a whole house, it would be much cheaper to learn to make your own curtains. It really is easy (just takes time and patience) and means you can get exactly what you want.

For example, I once found some curtain fabric material in my local fabric place (independent, buys mostly offcuts / rejected sample rolls / end of line fabric) and bought enough to make full length curtains for double glass doors into garden. Cost me £20. I was in John Lewis 6 months later and saw the same fabric (with the pattern rotated 90 degrees) for sale, where the curtains would cost over £100.

If you buy from posh fabric shops, the cost will obviously be higher, but often still not as much as buying them ready made. Usually takes me a weekend to make a set.