How To Measure for Blinds

I recently shared that one of my first jobs after high school was working in the custom window fashion department selling custom blinds and drapery. One of the many things I learned about working there, was how to measure correctly for window blinds and measure for drapery for the correct fullness  along all the custom blinds / drapery lingo (pinch pleat, back tab, traverse rod etc)

For our living room and dining room, we went with in-stock cut-measure Levelor 2 inch faux wood blinds from Lowes. My favorite brand of blinds to sell back in the day were Levelor & Bali, I'm so happy they make ready-made ones now :) We measured our blinds (below is my how-to) because almost all windows are uneven and then picked out our blinds and had a Lowes CSR cut our blinds down to the correct size. Both of our living room & dining room blinds are the same width 70.5 wide, we purchased the 72 width blinds. 

How to measure for inside mount blinds (blinds that rest inside your windows) you also want to check the depth of your windows, some older homes have shallow inside window depth. 

For our kitchen, bedrooms & master bathroom we decided to go with ready made roman shades from JCP, read more about how I plan on customizing the roman shades here. When measuring for our roman shades (and any outside mount blinds) I like outside mount blinds to be the width of the window sill, if there's no window sill add 2-3 inches past the window on both sides for privacy. When installing outside mount blinds, you can install them as high as you want 2-4 inches above the window or even where they meet your drapery rod. Whatever is pleasing to your eyes.  Measuring for outside mount blinds or shades below. I created a printable PDF version of my 'How to Measure for blinds' for everyone to use below. Hopefully my PDF works 

  Window Measuring by mrsclh

This week we'll be installing on window blinds for our dining & living room. Most likely we'll be using paper shades in our bedrooms until my fabric arrives for my to recover our roman shades. I'll share some blind installation tips this week.