Blinds & Shutters near you

The relevant product standard is BS EN 13120, Internal blinds — performance requirements including safety, in its 2009 edition with the 2014 amendment. It followed a European Commission decision in 2011 addressing the risks posed to children by internal blinds, corded window coverings and safety devices, and it reworked the standard to remove the dangers posed by potentially hazardous looped cords and chains. Blinds supplied since the amendment took effect must be safe by design, carry warning labels on the product and its packaging, and come with safety devices and instructions.

Underneath the standard sits general safety law. Anyone who manufactures, imports, distributes or sells internal window blinds, including supplying and fitting them, has a duty under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005 to supply only safe products. The standard is how that duty is normally discharged for blinds, and it is why a reputable supplier will arrive with a child safety device in the box rather than leaving it to you to think of.

The Office for Product Safety and Standards puts the practical advice plainly. New blinds with looped cords must have child safety devices installed at the point of manufacture or sold with the blind; blinds installed earlier may not have these features and millions of households could be affected. It recommends fitting a tidy, a tensioner or a cleat, with cleats positioned out of children's reach on an adjacent surface, at least 1.5 metres from the floor. It also makes the point people forget: move furniture away from windows, because children climb, so keep furniture clear of window blinds.

Approved Document K allows an escape from classifying glazing in a critical location, and it is sometimes misread as covering shutters and blinds. The provision is that if glazing in a critical location is protected by a permanent screen then the glazing itself does not need to comply with requirement K4. But the screen has to satisfy all of three conditions: it must prevent a sphere of 75mm from coming into contact with the glazing; it must be robust; and if it protects glazing installed to help prevent people from falling, it must be difficult to climb, with no horizontal rails given as the example.

Run a blind through that test and it fails on the first word. A screen that can be raised, drawn back or folded away is not permanent, and a fabric blind stops no sphere from reaching the glass. Plantation shutters fail too: louvres are horizontal rails, they open, and the gaps are far wider than 75mm. A fixed, robust grille or guard rail is the kind of thing the provision contemplates, and even then the no-horizontal-rails point matters wherever the glazing is there to stop someone falling.

The consequence is worth stating because it is occasionally used as a sales argument: fitting shutters to a low-level window or a glazed door does not remove the need for the glass to be classified. Where the glass in a critical location is old annealed glass, shutters make the room look finished while leaving the original hazard exactly where it was. Treat the glazing and the window dressing as two separate decisions.

The most reliable way to deal with a cord hazard is not to buy one. Cordless blinds, spring-operated rollers, wand-operated venetians, motorised blinds and perfect-fit units integrated into the window frame all remove the loop entirely, which is a better answer than any device retrofitted to a loop. For a nursery, a child's bedroom or any room where a cot or a bed sits near a window, that should be the starting specification rather than an upgrade considered at the end.

Where a corded blind is chosen anyway, the device that comes with it has to be fitted, not left in the bag. The Office for Product Safety and Standards is specific that a cleat should be positioned out of children's reach on an adjacent surface, at least 1.5 metres from the floor — on the wall beside the window, not on the window frame at handle height where it is convenient. A tensioner that holds a chain taut against the wall is often better than a cleat, because it requires no habit to work.

Motorised blinds bring their own considerations rather than none. The power supply has to come from somewhere, which on a retrofit usually means a rechargeable battery pack and a charging routine somebody has to remember. And on any window that serves as an emergency escape, remember that the glazing and the opening still have to work in a power cut, so nothing motorised should ever obstruct an escape opening in a way that needs electricity to clear.

Internal blinds and internal shutters in an ordinary house are a furnishing decision and need no permission. The picture changes on a protected building: the Planning Portal states that if you live in a listed building you need listed building consent for any significant works, internal or external, which is why interior shutters in a listed house are not automatically outside the regime. Many period houses also have original working shutters folded into the reveal, and those are usually part of what is listed.

External shutters are a different matter again, because they change the appearance of the elevation. In a conservation area, national park or area of outstanding natural beauty the Planning Portal warns that there may be additional restrictions, and a council may have made an Article 4 Direction withdrawing permitted development rights. External roller shutter boxes on a front elevation are the kind of alteration that attracts attention, and it is far cheaper to ask the council first than to remove them later.

Original timber shutters deserve a word of their own, because they are frequently painted shut and written off. They were the standard answer to a cold British night before curtains became common, they work remarkably well, and a joiner freeing and repairing them is usually cheaper than a set of plantation shutters and better regarded by a conservation officer. On a listed building it is also the route least likely to need consent for a new intervention.