Roller Blinds

About using roller blinds

Can I put any fabric in my roller blinds?

What fabrics are available?

We have a whole range of fabrics. I think we've probably got thousands. It really depends on what type of blinds you're having and what problem you're trying to solve. They can range from transparent and sheers, through to blackout. In fact, we don't actually call them blackout. We call them dim out. Unless you have a completely sealed unit, your blind is not going to provide you 100% blackout. There will be the halo effect. Same with a curtain. You will get light coming around the edges. But most people find that's enough that they can sleep with. There won't be any shafts of light in your eye waking you up at 4 a.m.

Can I put any fabric in my roller blinds?

No. We have, as I said, thousands of fabrics, and we have specialist fabrics for roller blinds. These have been laminated, so they've been slightly stiffened and it's water-repellent. The trouble with having your own fabric is that it needs to be tested. This is an expensive process. We need to make sure that they can go through that lamination process to be stiffened, and sometimes fabrics melt. I'm sure that we can find you something in our range that will suit.How big a blind can you make?

How big a blind do you need? Usually it's limited by the fabric's width. Most curtain fabric is 140 centimeters wide, and then you join it. With blind fabric, typically it's 1.8 meters wide. However, we've got fabric that goes up to 3 meters. The really specialist performance fabrics are called screen fabrics, and these are transparent. You can see through them depending on where the light source is. They are very robust. They don't fray and they don't sag. Really though, we don't recommend going over 3 meters wide. This is a soft furnishings product. It needs to look nice in your house. If you have a wall of fabric, sometimes it's not going to look so good, and it's not going to give you the flexibility that you might like in dropping and leaving one blind up.

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Will I need an electrician to install my blinds?

Will I need an electrician to install my blinds?

It's unlikely that you'll need an electrician. Unless you're doing something that requires part P certification, such as putting a new fuse spur then no.What power source do I need?

The power source that you need depends on the type of blind and what you've got at the window already. If you're got nothing, very simply you can probably have a battery. These can range from double A batteries to the standard or rechargeable ones. We add in a solar panel and the battery is recharged. The next step is a 24 volt battery motor. That will need a transformer if it's coming off mains because you see we have 240 volts in this country. And finally, we have the standard 240 volt main power supply.

What would you recommend?We would always recommend to go mains power these motors are always quieter, they have a lot more power in them so they can lift heavier blinds and for longevity, reliability and ease of use I would always go with main power.If you haven't got any main power, don't worry we usually can find it somewhere in your room or in your house, we can come from outside and drill through a wall. This is all covered by our fitters.

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How do I control motorised blinds?

How do I control my motorised blinds?To control your motorized blinds, we have a range of options. Our simplest is our Junior Wiser Handset. This requires a human to press a button. It can go up, it can go down, and you can stop it at any point. It's just one touch.Our second option is a clever remote control. This has a calendar with date and time in it. You can still manually override any point moving your blinds and curtains, but in the weekdays, Monday to Friday, your blinds can be open when you come downstairs ready for that cup of coffee before you go to work. And then when you get home, if dusk has already fallen, your curtains and blinds are closed. Now I'm assuming that on the weekends, you wanna have a lie-in, so we'll make sure that the blinds and curtains don't open quite so early.Finally, we have our completely Wiser solution. This is where we get excited because this is where your blinds and curtains become automated. We don't want you actually thinking about how you interact with your curtains and having to even press a button.We want it just doing it for you, and we want it doing for you when you're not even at home. Time's up. If you learned something from this episode, please like or share. If you've got any comments, or you've got a question for a future episode, please leave it below.

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Do roller blinds work with Alexa?

Well, you need to go at least a half a meter either side of your doors and then most people want to put the awning out over a table and chairs. That table and chairs is probably gonna be about three meters, so you want half a meter either side and then probably three meters into the garden.

To be honest, folding arm awnings are for shade. They're meant to be there for you to sit under when it's a nice sunny day and you're eating outside perhaps. If you want to have an awning or an outside shade which protects you from a light drizzle, then you really need to look at our veranda solution, which has legs, and therefore provides a lot more stability. In fact, it can even take snow on top of it.

Yes. I've got them in my kitchen, I walk in, and I shout to Alexa, "Alexa, open my blinds." Up they go every morning, and then I close them again at night in the same way. Obviously you need motorized blinds, and you need something called our WiSER hub. That's the brains that actually drives it, but we can help with all that, just ask for our home consultation visit.

My conservatory gets very hot in the Summer. I'm afraid they're going to, they are glass rooms, but we can control that slightly. Blinds will help reflect the heat back out of the glass. We have lots of different options, and as a conservatory blind expert we've been doing this for 30 years now. That's where we started from. We know that we have the most options to put in your window. So, we have pleated blinds, pinoleum blinds, and roof rollers.

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What are my options with controls for my blinds?

Hi, I'm Chris from Wiser Interiors, and I just wanted to talk to you today about controls for your blinds. Now, I'm sure a lot of you understand there are manual options, but there are plenty more exciting things available for you for your shades.

So in the good old days, you had a manual blind that you have to adjust. And recent regulations, well, actually, it's a few years old now, means that they all have to be child safe. So they need a P clip or a child breaker in them. When the blinds get bigger, you have to go round and manually adjust them by hand or you have a breaker in them. When they're larger, the breakers can present a problem and make them difficult to use.

And the stuff now that gets me really excited is to get away from all those manual blinds and automate them, make them motorized. So I don't even have to go up and adjust the blind to the right position. And to that end, you end up with a mixture of remote controls. Everybody remembers the time, or maybe this is showing my age, where you had to step up and press the button on the TV to change the channel. Then it went to remote controls and you could just sit in your lounger chair and do it.

Well, you can do that now with your blinds. Simple remote control. Press the button. The blind comes down. Press the button. The blind goes up. And you can adjust it to where you want it. There are other controls there, as well, that allow you to adjust the frequencies, so that you can control multiple blinds, one at a time, or all together.

But there's one thing with that. If I come into a room and it's already too hot, putting the blind down is not going make any difference to the temperature of the room. How do I solve that? Well, it's done easily, with a device like this. This device monitors the temperature or the light levels in your room and will adjust the blind to the level that you want. Likewise, with light levels. If you're looking to protect your oak floors, it will drop the blind to prevent the UV damage that's occurring with high light levels.

There's another thing with that, though. I've still got to get involved, in terms of adjusting the blinds and making sure they're in the right place. This is where these things start to come in: home control for shading. Again, you have multiple channels here, so you can come in and adjust the blind as you want. But if you press this button like that, this now becomes an automation remote control device. Your blinds can be adjusted on autopilot. You don't have to worry about going around the three or four blinds over your bifold doors to adjust them. It does it for you. And even if you go on holiday, there's a feature in here that's called Simulated Occupancy. So it will adjust the blinds in a window during the day, so that anybody looking at it will think, "Actually, is there someone there or isn't there?" Great stuff. You just put it in the drawer and forget about it, and the blinds do their thing.

You can now use your Smartphone to control your blinds. So to that end, you can program all the blinds and you can adjust them independently, just by tapping on the app, causing the blinds to move. But more excitingly, and the bit that I really love, is about the fact that they will move and adjust without me having to get involved. So if the room is getting too hot, the blinds will close. If the room is getting too light, the blinds will close.

You can also set scenes, so that when you're leaving home, you can say, "Ah, I'll just make sure all the blinds are shut." With a simple tap on the icon, the blinds will close in several windows for you, allowing you that peace of mind that everything is under control.

With the hubs that we have available to us now, means that we can integrate not only blinds, but your lights and your heating and other elements, into the same hub. So those of you that are more technically minded are already thinking, "Oh, good. I've managed to open up a couple of ports on my router."

The hubs that we provide you will control you blinds, will allow you to control lights, will allow you to control cameras. And also, you can plug in leak detectors and smoke devices, to ensure security and safety in your home all together.

Having got one of those, the new big thing, and the new thing on the block is voice control. Well, if you wanted to do that, you can do that too. "Alexa, turn on night time." "Okay."

So I hope that's got you excited about how you can control your blinds. You don't have to do it manually any more. You don't even have to think about having to adjust them every time it gets hot and cold or light or dark. The systems can do it for you.

So have a think about that, and I'll see you next time.

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