Vertical Blinds

Most blinds struggle on a window wider than it is tall. Verticals don't. The weight sits on the headrail and spreads across the carriers, so a five metre patio door is no harder than a two metre one, provided you bracket the track every 800mm. Draw them back and the louvres bundle at one end, or split both ways, which is what you want when the handle is in the middle and somebody is coming through with a tray.

Standard louvre is 89mm. There is a 127mm too, and across a wide run the broader one looks calmer, fewer joins to count. Bedrooms take blackout. Over a kitchen sink, antibacterial cloth that wipes down. A south-facing conservatory wants the foil-backed solar cloth or the room still cooks by two. Each louvre hangs off a hook, weighted at the bottom and chained to the next. One will get wrecked. You unhook it and slide a replacement on. The rest never moves.

Wrong on a small window. Under a metre wide the stack eats a third of the glass and you look at folded fabric all day. They do nothing for heat loss, so if the room runs cold fit a honeycomb. And they rattle. Leave a window on the latch behind them and you will hear about it all night.

Fashion moved on years ago and never came back. On a wide sliding door nothing else touches them for the money, which is why the 1970s semis round Culcheth keep me busy. Craig will bring swatches out and measure the drop at both ends, because those floors are never level and one measurement leaves fabric dragging at one side.