One of the trickery parts of a home to cover with a blind are doors; so your back door, French doors, patio doors, bi-fold doors, conservatory doors, sliding doors and doors onto Juliet balconies.
That’s a lot of different types of door blinds and a lot of different ways to cover them. Vertical blinds, ecofits, perfect fit blinds, and even venetian blinds can be installed to cover your doors it is just a question of how you go about it.
We know that you won’t just want to put anything on, or near your doors to cover them, so we’ve put together the ultimate door covering guide to help you make the right decision. With all of these, it does very much depend on the frame, if it’s plastic, wooden or a metal frame.
What blinds are best for Bi-fold Doors?
One of the most popular types of door, especially on extensions onto the rear of your house. These are huge focal points of any self-respecting kitchen extension, and are a key part of helping bring the outside in, or taking the inside out. Whichever it is.
But how to cover? We’ll the good thing is that there are multiple options depending on what you’re looking at doing.
If you’re wanting to install something onto the glass, covering each panel, then we would always advise our range of Perfect Fit blinds. These are a type of blind that clips directly onto the glass via brackets that are installed into the space between the glass and rubber beading. The best part of these blinds is that there is no drilling required, you simply screw the frame together, insert the brackets and then clip the frame onto them. This then gives you a single blind on each pane of glass, no strings or cords to worry about and perfect light control. All of our Perfect Fit blinds are aluminium venetians within the frame, so you can raise and lower the blind to your perfect height, and then angle the slats to let the light in as needed.
If that’s not quite right for you, then we also have our EcoFit pleated blinds, which also come as both a dimout and blackout blinds. These are similar in their installation to our Perfect Fits, as they require no drilling and install onto the glass, but these are a pleated material that is raised and lowered by hand on each pane of glass. Our EcoFits come in a few different styles; a single pleated fabric which is great for helping shade your room and comes in a range of colours. Then we have a dimout honeycomb material which will let the light filter into your room, but will also help to trap some heat in your room. We then have a 3rd option, which is a blackout honeycomb fabric, so this will not only help trap heat into your room, but is also blackout so will block the light from entering your room.
If you’re not keen on installing a blind into the rubber beading of your new bifolds, then you can look at installing a traditional roller blind. For this you wouldn’t install the blind onto the doors (oh no) as we don’t want to damage them in any way, instead you would install the blind into the window recess around the doors. Now, there are a couple of limitations to roller blinds on these doors;
The blind is either up, or down, blocking your view or letting all of the sun in. There's not really a halfway house with these.
The width is an issue, the widest blinds is 340cm for our plain roller blinds. Bifolds can be much wider than that, which means having 2 blinds, with the controls at opposite ends (and a gap down the middle).
But saying that, they are a cost effective way of adding privacy to your home, and just roll up out of the way into the top of your recess.
Vertical blinds across the window span. It might not be what you had in mind, but is a very practical way to cover the whole set of doors in one. Each of our vertical blinds can be made upto 5m wide and you can have the whole blind work of just one set of controls. We would suggest having the controls on the side that you use the most, and then the vanes stack against the wall with the doors as this helps to keep anything that obstructs people's access through them together and out of the way.
What are the best blinds for Conservatory doors? (and Conservatories in general)
We have a whole section dedicated to conservatory window blinds, these are both our PerfectFit and EcoFit ranges. These will both help give you the control needed over the light entering, and can be made to fit the larger panes, small top windows and also the longer panes of glass on the doors. The only part we can’t cover is the roof - they’re just too tricky.
The beauty of using these types of blinds in a conservatory is that you can use the same type of blind across all windows, giving the room consistency in it’s look.
Which blinds are best for Upvc doors/ Back Doors and French doors?
We lumped these three types of doors into one category, mainly as they are all very similar and on a lot of new build homes, your back door is most likely a set of French Doors leading onto your patio. If you’re looking to just cover a good old, standard back door then you’ve got a few options you can look at. One of these is the PerfectFit, which as mentioned before are great as they clip onto the window itself. This means that there is nothing screwed onto the door, and nothing that will get in the way preventing the door from opening.
If you’re looking to install a blind onto the door, then we would suggest a roller blind, but be careful with the depth of the brackets as these could catch on the wall, depending on how it opens, possibly preventing the door from opening fully.
Which blinds are best for Sliding doors?
Sliding doors are a little trickier as you won’t be able to install anything onto the glass as when the panes slide back onto each other, a Perfect Fit frame would prevent the doors from sliding. This would be the same for our EcoFit blinds too, so for these doors we recommend either a roller blind, or a vertical blind.
With a roller blind you’re best of trying to get one or two blinds to span the full width. Our plain roller blinds can be made upto 340cm wide and we would recommend choosing the control to be placed on the side that you use least often. This is just to help prevent people knocking into it and it getting in the way.
With a Vertical blind you would need to do the same in ordering one larger blind to cover the full span. The beauty of a vertical blind over the roller blind on here is that you can spin the vanes to control the light, whereas with a roller blind you have to move the whole blind up and down.
With a Vertical we would also suggest having the control and the vanes stack (bunch together) on the side you use least often. We all have a go-to side with doors like this, so keeping the stack out of the way will help to prevent people bashing into the vanes, and generally keep them out of the way.
What blinds go on Juliet balcony doors?
If you’ve got a Juliet balcony in your home, then you’ll know that you won't be walking through, which means that you can install things like Roman blinds, wooden blinds and roller blinds above the doors. You’ll need to install them high enough that the doors aren’t obstructed when they open inwards. You can also use things like the Perfect Fit or our EcoFit blinds to cover just the panes of glass on the door.
Which blinds are best for doors?
The most popular covering when installing blinds for your door is the blinds that install directly onto the glass. Perfect fit blinds and eco fit blinds fit the bill brilliantly. However most blinds can work just be sure to have a look at our measuring guides first.
With all of these doors and the blinds mentioned, you’re always best off ordering some samples first, or if you’re really not sure how to cover the door in your home, just reach out to one of our blind experts who will be more than happy to help answer any questions you have.
