Wood blinds

What you are actually buying

A wood blind is a venetian — how it tilts, how it stacks, where the light gets through and how it is measured are on the venetian blinds page, and the general question of composite against timber is on the faux wood page.

This page is about the timber itself, because with a real wood blind the material is the reason to buy it and the reason to be careful with it.

What you get for the money is that no two slats are the same. Grain runs at a different angle on each one, takes a stain slightly differently, and catches light differently as the blind tilts. That variation is invisible in a photograph and obvious in a room, and it is the entire difference between a wood blind and a very good imitation of one.

What you accept is that timber is a material that responds to its environment. Everything below follows from that.

Basswood, and why it is the slat timber

Almost every real wood venetian in the world is basswood, and the reasons are practical rather than traditional.

It is light. Roughly half the density of a PVC composite of the same size, which is what makes a wide wood blind liftable by hand when the faux version is not.

The grain is fine and even. Open-grained timbers — oak, ash — take a stain unevenly on a thin section, so a light stain blotches. Basswood takes colour consistently, which is why it can be offered in pale finishes at all.

It stays flat. A slat is a very thin, very wide section of wood, which is the geometry most prone to cupping. Basswood is unusually stable for its weight, and kiln drying before machining takes most of the rest of the movement out.

It machines cleanly. The ladder holes and the routed edges come out sharp rather than furry, which is what makes the closed blind sit tight.

Other timbers exist in this product and they are specialities rather than upgrades. If somebody offers you oak slats, the questions are what it weighs and what the finish is doing to hold the grain closed.

Stain, paint, and the decision that is actually being made

Three finishes, and they are three different products in how they behave.

Stained. Colour soaked into the timber with a clear coat over it. The grain stays visible and the variation between slats stays visible. This is the finish people mean when they say they want real wood, and it is the one where the material is doing the work.

Painted. An opaque coat over the timber. It looks — deliberately — very like a painted composite slat, because a painted surface hides the grain that was the difference. If the room wants white slats, this is the honest moment to say that faux wood will look the same and cost less, and we will say it.

Natural or oiled. Minimal finish, maximum grain, and the least protection. It ages, it takes marks, and some people want exactly that. It is not a finish for a window somebody touches every day.

The decision underneath all three is what the blind is agreeing with. A wood blind in a room is a horizontal timber surface, and the room usually has others — a floor, a table, a door. The blind can match one of them, sit deliberately away from all of them, or split the difference and look accidental. Only the first two are choices.

Matching wood to wood, which is harder than it sounds

The most common disappointment with this product is a stain that looked right on a sample card and reads wrong in the room, and the cause is nearly always the same.

Different timber under the same stain gives a different colour. A walnut stain on basswood and a walnut stain on oak are not the same colour, because the grain absorbing it is not the same. Matching a floor by stain name will miss.

Light changes it more than the stain does. A north-facing room renders a warm stain cooler; a south-facing one in the afternoon renders everything warmer. A sample judged at the kitchen table is being judged in the wrong room.

Sheen matters as much as colour. A satin slat against a matte floor reads as a different colour even when it is not, because it is returning more light.

So the working method is: hold the sample against the actual thing you want it to relate to, in the room, at the hour the room is used. Then decide whether you are matching or contrasting, and commit. A blind that is clearly darker than the floor looks intentional. One that is a shade off looks like it was meant to match.

Where a wood blind is wrong

A bathroom. Not sometimes — always. The cycle between steam and dry is what makes a thin slat cup, and once one slat has cupped it fouls its neighbour and the blind stops closing evenly. It is gradual, it is not repairable, and any supplier willing to sell you basswood for a bathroom is a supplier worth a second question.

Directly over a kitchen hob or sink. Same moisture problem, plus grease, which a stained finish absorbs and a wipeable one does not.

In front of a radiator. Dry heat on one face and room air on the other is a cupping condition. Above a radiator is fine; in front of one is not.

On a very short window. The stack is the issue: a 50mm slat on a short drop parks a band of solid slats across the top, and on a basement or small bathroom window it takes a fifth of the glass and never returns it.

In a house where nobody will dust. More surfaces than anything else we make, and a stained slat shows dust more than a painted one. Said plainly at the visit, because a blind somebody resents is a bad sale.

The width advantage, which is the practical reason to choose timber

This is where wood wins on engineering rather than looks.

Force required to raise a venetian is the weight of the slats, and timber is roughly half the weight of composite for the same slat size. On a narrow window that is invisible. On a wide one it is the difference between a blind somebody raises casually and a blind that needs both hands and a deliberate effort.

The practical numbers: a composite venetian past about 2.2 metres wants a centre support and starts to be genuinely heavy. The same blind in basswood is comfortable well beyond that, and the limit becomes the headrail rather than the person.

So on a wide window in a dry room, timber is not the luxury option. It is the one that works.

Re-cording, which is why these outlast everything

The part of a wood blind that fails is the string, and that is good news.

A venetian has two cord systems doing constant work: the lift cords running through the holes in every slat, and the ladder cords the slats sit in. Both are under tension every time the blind moves, both abrade slightly at every slat, and after enough years one of them lets go. What almost never fails is the timber, and what rarely fails is the headrail.

So the failure people describe as “the blind broke” is usually a blind that needs re-cording — and on a well-made wood blind that is a repair rather than a replacement, because the slats are worth keeping.

Two practical points.

It is worth doing on timber and rarely on anything else. Re-cording is labour, and it costs a meaningful fraction of a new blind. On a cheap aluminium venetian the sums do not work. On a stained basswood blind cut to a window in a room that was decorated around it, they do — and the replacement would not match the sun-aged originals anyway.

Ladder tape changes the calculation. A blind with cloth ladder tapes rather than bare cords hides the slat holes and spreads the load, and those blinds tend to reach the re-cording point later.

If you have a wood blind that has stopped lifting evenly, or where one side climbs faster than the other, that is cords rather than timber and it is fixable. Tell us the slat width and roughly how old it is and we will say whether it is worth doing.

The stack, in numbers, because timber changes it

A wood blind stacks shorter than the composite version of the same window, and this is the second practical advantage of the material after weight.

Slat thickness is the reason. A basswood slat is thinner than the composite one it would be replacing, so the same number of slats gather into a shorter pile under the headrail. Across a typical drop the difference is not large in absolute terms — a few centimetres — but it lands exactly where it matters, across the top of the glass.

Two windows where that decides something:

A window with a view worth keeping. The stack is permanent when the blind is up, so a shorter stack is more sky.

A window with a transom or a decorative head. A stack that reaches into a divided upper pane looks like an error. The few centimetres timber saves are sometimes the difference.

And a third case where it does not matter at all: a tall window in a plain room, where the stack is proportionally invisible and the material choice should be made on everything else on this page.

Living with them

Dusting. A soft brush attachment, slats closed one way, then closed the other. Twice a year keeps a blind indefinitely. A dry microfibre glove is faster and less thorough.

Marks. Spot-clean with the least damp cloth that will do it and dry immediately. Water sitting on a stained slat lifts the finish, and that is the one piece of damage that shows permanently.

A cupped slat. Not recoverable, and individual slats can be replaced on a well-made blind. If several have cupped, the room is telling you something about its humidity.

Sun. A stained slat fades on the face that takes the sun, and the bottom slats go first because they are exposed in every position. Over many years a blind that lives half raised will show a line when fully lowered. It is slow, it is normal, and a UV-inhibiting topcoat slows it further.

Lifespan. Long. The mechanism outlives the room’s decoration and the timber outlives the mechanism, which is why re-corded wood blinds are a common repair and a sensible one.

Last updated 9 August 2026.