Do New Builds Come With Blinds?
No. Almost never, on almost any site, from almost any housebuilder. You will get glass, and that is where the specification stops.
It is usually the first thing people notice, because they notice it after dark on the day they move in, when every room is lit and visible from the road and there is nothing to pull across. So the real question is not whether they are coming. It is what you do about it tonight, and what you order this week.
The exceptions worth checking
There are three places blinds do sometimes appear, and all three are worth five minutes with your paperwork before you assume the windows are bare.
The first is the upgrade list. Some housebuilders offer window coverings as a paid option chosen at reservation, in which case they are fitted before handover and you will find them itemised rather than announced.
The second is an incentive. Where a plot has been slow to sell, or you bought late in a phase, a flooring and blinds package is a common sweetener, and it is the kind of thing that gets agreed verbally with a sales adviser and then lives in the reservation form rather than in anyone's memory.
The third is apartments. Schemes with shared glazing lines sometimes specify a uniform blind to keep the elevation consistent from outside, which means you may find one fitted and may be restricted on what can replace it.
If none of those apply, the answer is the one at the top.
Why they are not included
It is a sequencing problem rather than a saving.
Blinds and curtains are made to measure, and they cannot be measured until the windows are in, the plaster is finished and the sills are on. By the time a window is measurable, the house is weeks from handover and your name may not yet be on it. A housebuilder would be ordering several hundred made-to-measure items for people who have not chosen them.
They are also the most personal thing in the house. Two buyers on the same plot type will want different things in the same window, and a blind is not a fitting you can swap for the price of a coat of paint. Builders leave out the things that are costly to get wrong on someone else's behalf, which is the same reason you get no rugs, no lamps and usually no turf at the back. We wrote about the full list of what does not come with the house a fortnight ago.
So the windows are bare for the same reason the walls are white. It is the end of the build, not the start of the house.
What to do about tonight
Temporary privacy is a solved problem and none of the solutions are expensive.
Stick-up pleated paper blinds are the standard answer. They come in a roll, they are cut to width with scissors, they hold on an adhesive strip at the top, and they will see you through a few weeks without marking the frame. Buy them for the rooms that face the road and the bathroom, and ignore the rest of the house for now.
Static cling privacy film is the better answer for a bathroom or a ground floor window where you want permanent obscurity rather than something you raise and lower. It goes on with water, it comes off without residue, and it does not need a fixing in the wall.
What we would avoid is a cheap off-the-shelf roller cut down to fit. It takes the same drilling as the real thing, the same twenty minutes, and the same holes in the plasterboard, and you will take it down again in a month. If you are going to make a hole, make it for the thing you are keeping.
The one room worth doing properly straight away is the main bedroom, if anyone in the house sleeps badly in a light room. Blackout is a lining rather than a fabric, so it is specified behind whatever you have chosen to look at, and it is the one window where the temporary fix tends not to be good enough for long.
How long the real thing takes
Longer than people plan for, which is the argument for starting now rather than in the spring. Made to measure means a measure, an order, a production lead time and a fitting date, and each of those is a diary rather than a day. Measured to installed is usually a few weeks around Bristol and Bath.
The order of jobs matters more than the speed of any one of them.
Measure after the floors are down, because the floor finish changes the drop and a curtain cut to bare screed will hang short over carpet. Decide blinds and curtains together even if you only fit one of them now, because where the pole goes decides whether a blind can sit outside the reveal. And choose the fabric in the room rather than on a screen, against the bright white walls you have actually got, in the evening with the lamps on, which is when most choices fall over.
All of that is the next question rather than this one, and we have written it up in full in how to choose curtains and blinds for a new home.
So, in one line
No, your new build almost certainly does not come with blinds, check the reservation paperwork in case yours is the exception, put paper blinds up in the street-facing rooms tonight, and get the measure booked before the floors are down becomes the thing you are waiting on.
Send us the window
Design Seven is a Bristol studio. Most of our work is show homes for housebuilders, which means we furnish empty new builds for a living. We take on private projects too, whether that is a single room, a whole house, or curtains, blinds and lighting measured and fitted properly. We are based between Bristol and Bath, and work across the South West and further afield where the project warrants it.
Take one photo of the window and the wall either side of it, and send it over. Tell us three things: whether the room faces the road, whether there is a radiator or a worktop under the window, and how deep the recess is.
We will tell you whether that window wants a blind, curtains or both, where the pole or bracket should go, and which of them is worth doing in the first fortnight and which can wait until the floors are in.
Call 0117 450 6707, email info@designseven.co.uk, or use the form on our contact page.