A Renter's Guide to Blinds and Curtains

Renting doesn’t have to mean putting up with whatever blinds or curtains a landlord left behind. With a bit of planning, you can have properly fitted, good-quality window dressings that come with you to your next home.

Check your tenancy agreement first

Most tenancy agreements are more relaxed about window dressings than about structural changes, but it’s worth checking whether drilling into walls or window frames needs landlord permission before you order anything requiring brackets. Many landlords are happy to agree in writing, especially if you offer to make good any holes when you leave.

Tension and no-drill options

For recess-fit blinds, some fitting methods use tension or clamp brackets that grip the sides of the recess without any drilling at all — worth asking about specifically if you want a genuinely damage-free installation. Tension rods can also support lightweight curtains or voiles inside a recess without any fixings into the wall or frame.

Choosing made-to-measure as a renter

It’s a fair question whether made-to-measure is worth it if you might move in a year or two. The answer is usually yes if you choose standard, portable hardware — a pole or track fixed with easily removable brackets, sized to a common window width where possible — since well-made blinds and curtains transfer to a new home far more successfully than a bargain, ill-fitting set that was never going to outlast one tenancy anyway. See our made-to-measure vs ready-made comparison for the fuller case.

Making good when you leave

Small bracket holes are usually simple to fill and touch up before the end of a tenancy — a standard filler and matching paint is normally all that’s needed, and worth doing regardless to protect your deposit. Keep any leftover paint or a note of the wall colour from move-in day if you can, to make this straightforward later.

What we’d recommend

For a rented home, we’d generally suggest a simple, well-made roller or Roman blind on a standard bracket, or curtains on a pole with easily removable fixings — both give you a genuinely good-quality result that’s realistic to take with you, without over-committing hardware or fabric to a specific window you won’t always own.