Shutters or shutter blinds

[Procrastatron]

Morning everyone. DH has embarked on one of his lockdown DIY projects... the living room. We bought the house two years ago and inherited grubby wooden blinds in the large bay window (1930s) and we have always agreed that eventually get shutters installed as they offer privacy on our busy ish road and we like the look... easy...
We can’t agree on timing, I am fairly confident that by the time he has painted the much neglected living room it will highlight just how grim these blinds are. They are discoloured and the vertical fabric support tape stuff is stained beyond cleaning.
So I’m starting my research now. Blinds/curtains to go is our go to for a lot of our window needs and they do self install shutter blinds but not for our window size which is 381 wide by 178 tall.
Are we looking as bespoke shutters and can anyone recommend a good supplier/fitter? We are in London.

Hi. I’m just embarking on a blinds vs shutter journey also!

Have had two quotes for shutters one from a local company and one from Hilarys. The Hilarys one was about 20% more expensive than the local company one. I just did a search for shutters in Surrey so can’t specifically recommend anyone but I know the old favourite John Lewis do shutters if you wanted to be safe, though I get the impression you do pay more for them.

I’m also looking at DIY shutters which manufacture them to your bespoke size and then you install them yourselves. Now I have some quotes for the fully fitted ones I’m going to see whether it’s worth it.

Either way shutters are going to be a lot lot more expensive than blinds and I need to think about whether we can really justify the cost as it’s a good old chunk out of our project budget.

We used Totally Shutters (we're in East London) for ours. We had shutters for our bay (3 section) plus 5 windows supplied and fitted for £3k.

@AwkwardPaws27

We used Totally Shutters (we're in East London) for ours. We had shutters for our bay (3 section) plus 5 windows supplied and fitted for £3k.

I got mine from John Lewis 3 windows - 2 in the main LR and 2 up stairs in the windows facing the street . Cost £3k and I thought that was reasonable. Looks like I got ripped off 😭

We used Clement Browne for our shutters. We had them put in 2 years ago and it was probably the best house-related decision we’ve ever made!

We paid around £1500 for two large windows.

We used a company called 'shutterlab'
They were absolutely brilliant. Great service from start to finish, and by far the cheapest quote (and I shopped around alot) Highly recommended!