Roller blinds in Burlington

The mechanism is the decision here

On most of our pages the interesting question about a roller is the cloth. In Burlington it is what lifts it, and that is not a quirk of ours — it is what people here ask about, because a large share of the households we measure for are staying put rather than moving on.

A blind bought this year is one somebody may operate twice a day for fifteen years. If it takes two hands, a firm grip and a pull from shoulder height, it gets used less every year and eventually gets left in one position, at which point it has stopped being a blind.

A roller is the product where this matters most, for a simple mechanical reason: everything about how it feels comes from one component. A venetian has a tilt wand you can change; a vertical has a wand and a carrier. A roller has a tube, and whatever is inside that tube is the entire experience.

The three mechanisms, honestly compared

A continuous chain. A loop of beaded cord running over a clutch. It gives mechanical advantage, so a heavy blind lifts without much force, and it holds position anywhere. What it costs you is a loop of chain hanging in the room — which has to be tensioned to a wall bracket to meet Canadian cord rules, which puts a fixing in your reveal, and which is the part people find themselves untangling. It is the right answer for very heavy or very wide blinds and rarely the nicest one elsewhere.

A spring. A tensioned mechanism inside the tube. Pull the bottom bar down a little and release, and it climbs; pull it down and it stays. One hand, no cord, no fixings, nothing hanging. On any window used daily in a house with children or anybody who would rather not reach up, this is what we fit.

Its limit is real and worth stating: the spring has to be balanced to the exact weight of that blind. A spring strong enough for a wide blackout is a spring that sends a light screen up like a rifle bolt. That is why a spring blind is specified to the fabric and the drop rather than ordered by size, and it is why a spring blind bought in a box so often feels wrong.

A motor. Removes force from the question entirely, which on this page is the whole point — see the motorized blinds page for how they are powered and controlled. What matters in this comparison is narrow: a motor is the only one of the three whose feel does not depend on the weight of the cloth.

What makes a roller hard to pull, in order

Worth knowing because people usually blame the wrong thing.

Weight. Cloth weight times width. A blackout is roughly twice the mass of a screen for the same size, and a three-metre blind is three times a one-metre one. A wide blackout is therefore the heaviest thing in the range and the one most often under-specified.

Spring balance. Covered above, and the most common single cause of a blind that annoys somebody.

Bracket alignment. A tube running in brackets that are not quite level binds slightly at one end. It is invisible and it is felt every single time. This is entirely an installation matter, which is why the crew that measured is the crew that fits.

Side channels. A blackout running in channels does not free-fall — the fabric is in contact with the aluminium down both edges. It is the price of a genuinely dark room and it is worth knowing before choosing it for a window somebody operates twice a day.

Where the bar is. A bottom bar behind a sofa, above a radiator, or over a sink is a bar that requires a manoeuvre. That is not the blind’s fault and it is still your daily experience of it.

The brackets, which are half of how it feels

Everything above is about what is inside the tube. What holds the tube matters almost as much, and it is invisible once the blind is up.

A roller runs between two brackets. If they are not in the same plane — one a millimetre proud of the other, or one a degree out of level — the tube runs very slightly skewed. Nothing looks wrong. But the fabric tracks toward one side as it rolls, the blind takes a little more force to start every single time, and after a year or two the roll has crept far enough that the bottom bar no longer sits parallel to the sill.

Three things cause it, and all three are installation rather than product.

Fixing into something that moves. Drywall without a fixing, old plaster, or the soft timber of a hundred-year-old reveal. The bracket is tight on the day and loose in a year.

Not checking level across the opening. A window head is very often not level in an older house, and a bracket set to the head inherits that. It is set to a level line and packed, not to the timber.

Packing one end and not the other. Where a reveal is deeper on one side — extremely common on a replacement window fitted into an original opening — one bracket needs a shim. Skipping it is the single most frequent cause of a blind that “was fine at first”.

This is the part of a roller that cannot be bought. The mechanism, the fabric and the bar arrive in a box; whether the blind is pleasant to use in year five is decided in ten minutes by whoever holds the drill, which is why the person who measured is the person who fits it.

What a roller sounds like

Nobody raises this at a showroom and it is one of the things people notice most once a blind is living in a quiet house.

A chain against a frame. The commonest noise in the product, and it is the loop tapping the reveal when a window is open or when somebody walks past. A wall tensioner removes almost all of it, because a taut chain does not swing.

Fabric moving. A light screen hanging in front of an open window will move and brush the frame. Weight in the bottom bar is the fix, and it is the cheapest of all the options on this page.

The bar landing. An over-tensioned spring sends the blind up faster than intended and the bottom bar arrives against the headrail with a knock. That is a balance fault, not a design feature, and it is adjustable.

A motor. A tube motor is audible — a low hum for the few seconds it runs. Quality varies more here than in anything else about a motorized blind, and it is the single thing worth listening to before buying one. In a bedroom, on a schedule, at six in the morning, it matters.

A squeak. Almost always the idle end — a plastic pin in a plastic socket, dry after some years. A drop of silicone, not a new blind.

None of this is a reason to choose a different product. It is a reason to say out loud which room the blind is going in, because a family room forgives all five and a bedroom forgives none of them.

What is inside the tube, in plain terms

Worth knowing because it explains why two rollers that look identical feel entirely different, and because it tells you what can be fixed later.

A clutch. The unit at one end of a chain-operated roller. Inside it is a one-way brake: pulling the chain one way turns the tube, and letting go locks it. That is why a chain blind holds anywhere without any tension. Clutches are a consumable — they wear, they can slip after years of daily use, and on a well-made blind the clutch is a part rather than the whole blind.

A spring and a governor. In a cordless roller, a torsion spring runs the length of the tube and a small governor stops it from unrolling freely. The spring supplies the lift; the governor decides that a gentle tug means “go up” and a firm pull down means “stay”. When people describe a cordless blind as feeling “clever”, the governor is what they are describing.

A motor and a battery, or a motor and a wire. A tube motor is a sealed unit doing the same job with none of the balance problem, which is why a motor is the only mechanism that does not care what the fabric weighs.

The idle end. The other end of every roller, and the part nobody thinks about. It is a bearing in a pin. A cheap one is a plastic pin in a plastic socket and it is where a squeak comes from in year three.

Weight, in actual numbers

The single most useful thing to understand about a roller, and it is arithmetic.

Fabric weight is quoted by area. A light screen runs somewhere around 300 grams per square metre; a coated blackout is often twice that. A blind two metres wide by two metres tall is four square metres, so the cloth alone is roughly 1.2 kg as a screen and 2.4 kg as a blackout — before the tube and the bottom bar.

Two consequences follow.

Doubling the fabric weight roughly doubles the force to start it moving. That is why the wide blackout in a living room is the blind somebody in the house eventually stops using, and why it, rather than the tall window, is usually the one that justifies a motor.

Weight and width compound. A blind twice as wide in a cloth twice as heavy is four times the load on the same tube. Past that, the tube itself has to get larger — which is a specification decision made with a tape, not a preference expressed at an order.

What we look at on a roller that is fifteen years old

A fair share of the calls here are about blinds already in the house, so this is what we actually check before saying whether it is worth keeping.

Does it hold where you leave it? Draw it to the middle and let go. A blind that creeps down slowly has a tired spring or a slipping clutch, both of which are usually a part rather than a product.

Does it run square? Lower it fully and look at the bottom bar against the sill. A bar that has gone out of parallel means the roll has telescoped along the tube, which is a habit problem — pulling from one corner — and is often recoverable.

Is the fabric stiff at the bottom? Feel the lowest thirty centimetres against the part that lives rolled up. If the exposed section is noticeably stiffer, that is ultraviolet damage to the coating and it is terminal. It also means the blind will show a line if it is ever fully lowered after years at half-mast.

Are the brackets solid? Push the tube gently upward at each end. Movement means a fixing has worked loose in the reveal — common in older plaster, and a ten-minute fix.

Is the chain tensioned to the wall? On any blind in a room a child uses, an untensioned chain loop is the thing to deal with first regardless of anything else on this list. It is not a legal obligation for a blind you already own, and it is the one item here we would move on today.

Two of those five you can put right yourself in a few minutes, two mean the blind has reached the end, and one is a habit. Knowing which before anybody quotes is the point.

We do not run a repair service — and here is what to do anyway

Worth being straight about the boundary, because on a page about blinds lasting fifteen years it would be easy to imply otherwise.

We make blinds and we fit what we made. There is no service van and no call-out for a blind somebody else supplied. That is not us being unhelpful; it is that the parts on a boxed blind are usually moulded into the assembly rather than being components, so there is frequently nothing to change even when the fault is obvious.

So here is the useful version, which costs you nothing either way.

Two you can fix in five minutes. A blind tracking crooked has almost always telescoped on the tube from being pulled down by one corner — roll it fully up, then draw it down square from the centre, several times, and it usually walks itself back. A bracket that has worked loose is four screws, and if the fixing has torn out of the plaster it needs to move a few centimetres to fresh material rather than back into the same hole.

Two mean it is finished. Fabric that has stiffened or discoloured is ultraviolet damage to the coating or the yarn, and nothing reverses it. A tube that has taken a permanent bow will not come back straight.

One is a habit. Pulling from one corner is what caused the first problem on this list, and it will cause it again on a new blind.

The reason to set it out is that “the blind has stopped working” is four different things, and two of them do not need anybody to sell you anything.

Last updated 9 August 2026.