Types of blind window blinds vertical blind

Before you decide if you want to have blinds, let’s look at what a blind actually is and it’s origins. The window blind is a specific type of window covering which is made with slats of fabric, wood, plastic or metal that adjust by rotating from an open position to a closed position by allowing slats to overlap. Metal window blinds are often used outside of the house or business to protect against theft, temperature, vision, bad weather and fire. Often external blinds are machine-operated, rather than hand operated.

The horizontal version uses a thin woven "ladder" system to suspend the slats and enable slats to be closed via a rotating drum to which each upper end of the woven ladder is wrapped and attached. A lift cord allows the blind to be pulled up and stack tightly to top of window when desired. Quite simple but very effective!

Of course, you also have the vertical blind which uses a generally wider slat and has the added feature of being able to pull a cord to stack the slats together either to one side or to separate in the centre and stack on each end. This design of blind allows rotation of slats by a rotating shaft in the upper head rail housing which runs through independent geared carriers that will convert twisting of tilt rail to a rotation of each individual slat in synchrony. The original vertical blinds were invented in the United States, in fact, Kansas City, Missouri, by Edward Bopp and Fredrick Bopp who held the original patent. The company name at the time was Sun Vertical. In the 1960s the patent and company was sold.

Finally, the term window blinds is also sometimes used, somewhat inaccurately, to describe window coverings generically—in this context window blinds include almost every type of window covering, i.e. shutters, roller blinds, roman blinds and of course, vertical blinds and horizontal blinds.

In summary, you can see there are a lot of choices and may be a few more than you had thought of.

A Definition of a Blind and the Types Available