What is the price per square metre for roller blinds in the UK?

What is the price per square metre for roller blinds in the UK?

There is no single UK price per square metre for roller blinds, and most suppliers do not price them that way. They price by width and drop, in bands. As a rough guide, a price survey by one large UK online blinds retailer, correct as of July 2024, put the average made to measure roller blind at 120 x 120 cm at about £35 online. That blind is 1.44 square metres, so about £24 a square metre. The same survey put fitting at £55 to £125 a blind. A shop that measures and fits will charge more than these online prices.

Why a square metre price can mislead

The same area does not cost the same to make. Another online retailer's price guide from August 2022 priced three blackout roller blinds in the same fabric, each exactly one square metre:

The wide, short blind cost twice as much as the square one. A wide blind needs a longer, stronger tube and bottom bar and a wider cut from the fabric roll. A narrow blind still needs the same brackets, chain and labour as a bigger one. So a flat rate per square metre gets some sizes wrong, and you only find out which ones when the margin is gone.

How shops price roller blinds

• A width and drop grid. Widths across the top, drops down the side, a price in each cell. This is how most suppliers send their prices, and it handles odd shapes properly.
• A rate per square metre with a minimum. Easy to explain to a customer. It needs a minimum charge, so small blinds do not lose money, and a surcharge above a certain width.
• Supplier cost plus margin. You take the supplier's grid price, add your margin and add fitting. It is accurate, but someone has to look up the grid for every blind.

A worked example

Here is a square metre rule with example figures: £30 a square metre, a minimum of one square metre, and £15 extra for blinds wider than 180 cm. Use your own numbers.

Check each line against what the blind costs you from your supplier. If the wide ones or the very small ones come out close to cost, change the minimum or the surcharge, not the whole rate.

Putting the price on your website

A customer online will not do the sum. They type a width and a drop and expect to see a price. If you price from a grid, upload the grid as it is. If you price by the square metre, turn your rule into a grid in a spreadsheet first: your rate times the area in each cell, with the minimum and the surcharges already in. Then every size is priced the same way in the shop and online, and a size between two bands is priced at the next band up.

Curtain and Blind Calculator reads a grid like that and shows the price on your Shopify product page as the customer types the sizes. It is $99 a month on Shopify, about £79, with a 7-day free trial.

Next step

Install Curtain and Blind Calculator from the Shopify App Store, or ask us to set up your first product with your own price list.

First published on the InterioApp blog.