That First Evening In A New House
The first evening in a new house is usually lovely right up until it gets dark. Then the windows turn into black mirrors, you realise the neighbours have a very clear view of you eating a takeaway off a cardboard box, and somebody says "we should probably sort the windows".
Almost everyone has that moment. It rarely comes up before completion, and it catches people out because there is nothing at all up there. No blinds, no poles, sometimes not even anything to fix a pole to.
The good news is that windows are one of the easier things to put right, and one of the few that changes a room straight away. Here is roughly how it goes.
So do new builds come with blinds?
Usually not, no. Most new build specifications cover the kitchen, the bathroom, the flooring and the paint, and that is where it stops. Curtains and blinds tend to be down to you.
That said, it is always worth asking. Some developers offer blinds as an optional extra before completion, and some throw them in with a higher specification or when a plot needs a nudge. The time to ask is while the house is still being finished rather than after you have the keys, so if you are reading this before you move in, that is a good five minute phone call. If they are offered, no harm in asking what is actually being fitted.
Otherwise, plan on sorting them yourself and be pleasantly surprised if not.
A few quirks worth knowing about
New build windows have a handful of things that catch people out. All of them are much easier to deal with before anything has been ordered.
The recess is often shallower than it looks, so there may not be as much depth as you would expect to fit a blind inside the window. Measuring the depth as well as the width saves a return.
Most modern windows have trickle vents along the top of the frame, and it is easy to end up with a blind sitting over them. Worth a quick look at where the vent is before deciding whether a blind goes inside the recess or across the front.
Open the window right up before you order anything, too. Handles that stick out, and the restrictors fitted to most upstairs windows, have a habit of catching on a blind hanging inside the recess.
And then there are the walls. New build walls are often plasterboard rather than solid brick, so a pole needs the right kind of fixing to stay up. There is usually something solid above the window to find. If drilling into a brand new wall is not your idea of a good Saturday, that is a very reasonable job to hand to somebody else.
What to do in the first week
You want privacy tonight, and you do not want to rush a decision about something that will be up for the next ten years.
Those stick-on paper blinds are honestly great for this. They cost almost nothing, they go up in five minutes, and they buy you a couple of months. Half the windows on any new estate have them in September and nobody thinks twice about it.
Front of the house and the bedrooms first. The back can usually wait a fortnight.
Which rooms suit what
Most houses end up with a mix, which is usually the right answer.
Bathrooms, en-suites and kitchens are happier with blinds. Something wipeable or waterproof, fitted in the recess. Fabric near a shower or a hob has a shorter life than you would hope.
Bedrooms often work best with both. A blackout blind does the practical bit, and curtains over the top stop the room feeling bare and take the edge off the echo. That echo is one of the things people notice most in the first few weeks, and soft fabric at the window is a big part of what fixes it.
Living rooms and dining spaces are really where curtains earn their place. A blind on its own tends to leave the window looking like a gap in the wall rather than part of the room.
Landings and hallways quite often need nothing at all. If nobody can see in, leaving it bare is a perfectly good decision and one less thing to buy.
Things that can happily wait
Quite a lot, whatever the internet says.
The spare room will probably change its mind about what it is before you finish it, so a cheap blind for a year is fine. The utility does not need anything lovely. And nothing has to match from room to room, which is the bit people worry about most. It matters within a room. Nobody is standing on the landing comparing it to the back bedroom.
If you are tackling the whole house at once, the one thing we would say is that curtains before furniture usually pays off. A room with good curtains and fairly ordinary furniture tends to look better than the other way round.
When you get to choosing fabric, we have written separately about choosing curtains and blinds for a new home, which goes into pole height, fullness and length. And for where the windows sit alongside everything else, there is where to start in a new build.
When you want a hand with it
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. If you have a house you are stuck on, tell us about it.