Motorisation has come on a long way over the last few years and the number of blinds that can be motorised has increased significantly. Motorisation can be as simple as using a remote control, or, linking to home automation systems such as Google Home, Amazon Alexa or even Apple’s Siri.
This page covers all of the products where motorisation is an option.
Roller or Visions blinds lead the way in terms of maturity of motorisation. The motor is a sealed unit, housing both the physical motor to raise and lower the blind as well as the lithium batteries. Operate via bluetooth or radio signal, link to home automation, operate on schedules or remotely through an App, rollers can do it all.
Let’s answer some of the most frequently asked questions.
Most are powered by lithium batteries. Don’t worry, you don’t have to take down the blind and change batteries. There is a port in the top of the blind to plug into, in order to recharge the batteries. Hard wiring the blind is also an option, although power cables have to be fed up to the blind.
If the top of the blind is difficult to reach, we have a number of solutions to extend the charging port towards the bottom of the blind, where its easier to plug in the charging cable.
Yes, however, the panel has to be facing the sun and isn’t discreet. We have installed a number of solar panels and overall, we have found they produce insufficient power during winter months to keep the blinds charged. The motors only use a few Watts of electricity, so there is little to no real financial saving and the winter months will probably still require you to unplug the panel and charge in a conventional manner.
The motors have matured and we have few issues with motors. In any event, we have a 3 year warranty and can swap in a new motor in a matter of seconds. We’ve never had a motor fail itself, the issues from the past have been with the lithium batteries.
This will depend on the weight of the blind, which in turns is a product of width, drop and fabric choice. Generally, we would expect the battery to hold charge, being used once per day, somewhere between 2 and 3 months. Infrequent use or blinds lighter in weight, may not need charging for several months.
As standard practice, to look after the battery, we recommend charging, not necessarily to full, every 3 months.
Each blind can be operated independently or as a group. You can stop the blind anywhere from the top to the bottom, and the motor automatically knows where to stop when it’s fully raised or lowered. Moreover, you can store up to four favourite positions, so you can click a button and walk away, confident that the blind will stop at a predetermined location.
We don’t think so, for several reasons. Motorisation is a useful option for:
There are many different types of pleated blind; roof pleated; tensioned pleated; free hanging pleated and perfect fit pleated.
Pleated blinds can be motorised, subject to a number of width restrictions.
Pleated blinds are more complex to build and so the motorisation is more complex and costly, too. They are lithium powered and require you to plug a lead into the blind in order to recharge them.
The only current option with Vertical blinds is to motorise the tilt mechanism, and this option is only available for blinds up to 3000mm in width.
Whilst the tilt mechanism works, the way it has been implemented, we personally do not believe it is the most intuitive.
The tilt operation for wood Venetian blinds can be motorised, however, the option to motorise the the raise and lower, has been discontinued.
The motors are significantly more expensive than other blinds.
Avoiding overly technical explanations, if a Wood Venetian blind is raised and lowered without the slats being perfectly flat (i.e. in the open position), a manual tilt mechanism can lose its settings. This also applies to the motorisation.
Unless you are religious in ensuring the blind is perfectly balanced when you come to raise and lower it, we would expect adjustment to be required to be made to the tilt operation and multiple points in its life.
The motor used with wood blinds can be battery or mains powered.
Again, subject to size limitations, Roman blinds can be motorised to raise and lower as required.