How to Quote Made-to-Measure Blinds and Curtains (Without Pricing Mistakes)

If you sell made-to-measure blinds or curtains, quoting is where you win or lose the job ‚ and where most pricing mistakes are born. In our work with window covering retailers, workrooms, and online sellers, a single quote done by hand typically takes 60 to 120 minutes: measurements, fabric calculations, supplier price grids, surcharges, margin, VAT. Quoting software built for blinds and curtains does the same job in minutes, because the price lists and the maths live in the system instead of in your head.

Here is what actually goes into a correct quote, where the manual process breaks, and what to look for in software.

What goes into a made-to-measure quote?

A complete quote for made-to-measure curtains or blinds needs seven inputs: the window measurements (width and drop), the product type and heading or operating system, the fabric and its roll width, the fullness ratio, the supplier's price for that size or fabric band, extras (lining, motorisation, cassettes, brackets, installation), and your margin and VAT treatment. Miss or mishandle any one of them and the quote is wrong ‚ usually in the customer's favour.

Most suppliers price blinds from width / drop price grids (a table where the price sits at the intersection of the size bands) and curtains from per-metre fabric prices plus making costs. Your quote has to combine both with your own margin, correctly, every time.

The maths, worked through

Take a real example — pencil pleat curtains for a window 240 cm wide with a 220 cm drop, fabric 137 cm wide at £24 per metre, fullness ratio 2.2:

• Required fabric width: 240 cm × 2.2 = 528 cm

• Widths of fabric needed: 528 ÷ 137 = 3.85 → round up to 4 widths

• Cut length per width: 220 cm + 20 cm for hems and headings = 240 cm

• Fabric required: 4 × 2.4 m = 9.6 metres

• Fabric cost: 9.6 × £24 = £230.40, before lining, making, track or fitting

The classic mistake sits in step two. Round 3.85 down instead of up and you buy 7.2 metres instead of 9.6 - the quote is £57.60 light on fabric alone, and the curtains come out skimpy. Add a pattern repeat, a price-grid lookup for the matching roman blind, a lining band, and a motor surcharge, and you can see why hand-quoting a three-window job fills an evening - and why the errors hide so well.

What is quoting software for blinds and curtains?

Quoting software for made-to-measure blinds and curtains (also called window covering CPQ ‚ configure, price, quote) is a system that stores your suppliers' price grids and fabric lists, applies your margins and VAT rules, does the width, drop and fullness calculations automatically, and produces a branded quote the moment the measurements go in. The difference from a generic quoting tool is the pricing engine: it must understand width/ drop grids, fabric bands, fullness ratios and per-item surcharges natively, because that is how this industry prices.

How InterioApp does it

InterioApp was built for made-to-measure blinds and curtains. Your supplier price lists go in once ‚ width x drop grids, fabric groups, surcharge lists for cassettes, rails, and motors. You set your margin per supplier or per product. After that, a measured-up quote takes minutes: pick the product, enter the measurements, and the correct price appears with your margin and VAT applied once, on a quote carrying your branding, ready to send from your phone or desk.

It runs the same way for a showroom retailer, a curtain workroom quoting trade customers, or an online seller putting instant prices on their website. When a supplier revises prices, you update the list once and every future quote is right.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a made-to-measure quote take with software? Minutes. Once supplier price lists and margins are loaded, the quote is produced as fast as the measurements are entered — against 30–60 minutes for a typical multi-window job priced by hand.

Can I use my own supplier price lists? Yes. InterioApp works from your suppliers' actual price grids and fabric lists — width × drop tables, fabric bands, and surcharge lists — with your own margin applied on top. Send us one price list and we will load it before your demo, so you see your own products quoted live.

Does it handle linings, motors, and other extras? Yes. Extras are priced from the supplier's surcharge lists — linings, cassettes, side channels, motorisation, brackets, fitting — and added to the quote line by line, so nothing gets forgotten at the bottom of an estimate.

What does quoting software cost compared to quoting by hand? Plans are listed at getinterioapp.com. The comparison that matters: one hour saved per quote, and one avoided under-quote like the £57.60 fabric error above, typically covers a month of software.

The bottom line

Quoting by hand made sense when there was no alternative. Today it costs you evenings, and it hides mistakes that come straight out of your margin. If quoting is the slowest part of your sales process, fix the process.

See your own products quoted live: send us one supplier price list and book a 20-minute demo at getinterioapp.com.