The graded board
Every window covering you'll meet on an Australian order form, graded the way the guides grade everything: easy (a confident first-timer gets a clean result), fiddly (doable, tighter tolerances, dearer mistakes), or don't attempt this one (a false economy, and we say why). No grade is a sales pitch; nothing here is for sale.
TIER 1 · EASY
The workhorse, and the reason this site can honestly say "yes, you can DIY this". Two brackets, a clip-in, a chain tensioner. The measure is the entire risk, which is why it gets the site's biggest guide.
Watch for: reveal depth, winders and handles, and the side light gap if it's for a bedroom. Install: the full walkthrough.
Two rollers, one set of brackets, one window doing two jobs: sheer for the day, blockout for the night. Installs like a single roller with a deeper bracket.
Watch for: the double bracket needs more reveal depth than most windows expect; run the depth check twice before ordering, or go face fit.
Same install as their corded cousins, minus the chain, which removes both the tensioner step and the hazard it manages. Our default recommendation for kids' rooms, per the cord safety guide.
Watch for: nothing unusual. This is the one to order when in doubt for a nursery.
TIER 2 · FIDDLY
Light, cheap to get wrong quietly. The headrail must be dead level or the slats telegraph the error all the way down, and the little box brackets are less forgiving of a re-drill than a roller's.
Watch for: hold-down brackets on doors and openable windows, and the slat stack eating your view when raised. By the coast, aluminium beats timber for salt; see the coastal guide.
Everything the aluminium venetian asks, plus real weight, PVC especially. Wide timber slats want their bracket seats exactly placed, and a heavy headrail held overhead while you fiddle a bracket closed is a two-person job that gets described as one.
Watch for: fixings rated for the weight, a helper on anything wide, and moisture swelling timber in bathrooms; PVC exists for wet rooms.
The track is the whole game. It's long, it must be level to a degree the eye can't judge without a tool, and every carrier inherits its errors: blades that swing, overlap unevenly or catch on the sill. Sliding-door spans put the track at its longest and least forgiving.
Watch for: door-height drops (blades should clear the floor evenly), chain and weight connectors at child height, and the temptation to fix a long track with only two screws.
A fabric object with a mechanism's heart. The headrail carries real weight, the fabric shows every misalignment as a crooked fold, and the cording behind the scenes is exactly the kind the safety standard was written for.
Watch for: the cord rules in full (the guide), and squareness: a Roman on a leaning window advertises the lean.
A multi-channel track where every channel must be parallel, level and square, over spans that are wide by definition. The panels themselves are simple; the geometry holding them is not. First-timers should treat this as the top of the fiddly tier, and a wide one as the next tier down the page.
Watch for: span (past about 2400 mm this becomes a don't), and stacking direction planned before ordering, not after.
The box over the blind that hides the roll and closes the light gap above it. Carpentry, not blind-fitting: mitres, wall fixing, and a finish that sits at eye level asking to be judged.
Watch for: sequencing. The pelmet's fixings and the blind's brackets share the same crowded strip of wall; plan both before drilling either.
TIER 3 · DON'T ATTEMPT THIS ONE
Power, pairing, per-tube weight limits, and no bench-trimming a tube that arrived a whisker out. Hard-wired versions legally need an electrician. Genuinely great product, precisely because someone else installs it. The full reasoning.
Three or more blinds meeting at angles, where every measuring error shows twice, at the joints. Measured and ordered as a set by someone who does bays weekly, it comes out looking inevitable. Why.
Past about 2400 mm of span, or above comfortable step-ladder height, the physics stops cooperating: tubes deflect, headrails need surgical alignment, and the ladder maths gets unkind. The honest list.
ALSO ON THE FORM · NEIGHBOURING TRADES
We'll be straight about these too
Grades are for the standard version of each job on a standard window. Your actual windows can promote any row a tier, which is exactly what the planner checks, window by window.
The honest fork
Every window on this site ends at the same fork, and both tines are a win. Pick the one that fits the job in front of you.
The guides walk the whole job: the measure, the tools, the traps we flag before you hit them. No catch, nothing to buy here.
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