Blackout Panel Blinds: Compared Across UK Retailers

28 blackout panel blinds, £138-£562 for a standard window (around 1200×1200 mm). Enter your exact window below - each price updates to your size, and we move you to the right size band if you go outside this one.

Blackout fabric is woven tightly or given a coated backing so daylight cannot pass through the material itself. The catch is that a blind is not a sealed box: light still leaks in around the edges, where the fabric has to sit a little narrower than the recess to move freely, and along the top of the roll or stack. Even a good blackout fabric in an ordinary recess leaves a visible glow around the edges, so it is honest to think of it as deep shade rather than total darkness.

Where that edge light matters most - nurseries, shift workers sleeping in the day, media rooms, bright south-facing bedrooms - the answer is to seal the sides. Look for side channels or blackout tracks, a framed style such as perfect-fit or a roof blind held in channels, or a face-fixed blind cut to overlap the reveal. One real limit: slatted and louvred blinds (venetian, vertical) and layered day-and-night blinds cannot truly black out, because the slat tilts, cord holes and sheer bands always pass some light however dark the fabric. For genuine darkness, rollers, lined romans, channelled pleated and roof blinds get closest.

Two things help when you are choosing. The darkness comes from the coating or the tight weave, not the shade, so a pale blackout fabric blocks just as well as a dark one - pick the colour you want and let the cloth do the work. And blackout is really about light rather than warmth or noise, though a dense fabric does take a little of the chill and the echo out of a room as a welcome side benefit. If a blind is sold as a blackout venetian or a blackout vertical, read that as the darkest the style manages, not a promise of a dark room.

If a properly dark room is the goal, two fittings make the biggest difference: choosing a face fit cut to overlap the opening by a good margin on every side, or adding side channels that the fabric runs inside. Both close down the edge gap an ordinary recess blind leaves, and they matter far more to the result than the grade of fabric on its own. Measure for that overlap before you order, because a blackout blind cut to the bare opening will always leave the thin line of light at the edges you were trying to be rid of.

A panel blind is a set of wide, flat fabric panels that glide across a track and stack neatly to one side. Each panel moves on its own runner, so the blind slides open like a screen rather than rolling or folding, and the look is clean and architectural. It comes into its own on the windows other blinds struggle with - very wide picture windows, patio and bifold doors - and it doubles neatly as a sliding room divider.

Panels are made in fabrics from sheer to blackout, so you set the light level to the room. The panels overlap slightly as they stack, but the joins between them and the edges still let some light through, so they shade and screen rather than seal a room dark. Individual panels unclip for cleaning or replacement, which keeps a large covering manageable. Across a very wide span a panel blind is usually a more economical and better-looking answer than stretching another style to fit.

Colour:

28 of 28 ranges shown.

Bella Taupe Panel

at Swift Direct Blinds

from £138.00

Bella Taupe Panel

Como Panel

Plaza Moisture Resistant Panel

Boheme Moisture Resistant Panel

Sirocco Moisture Resistant Panel

Soma Panel

Bella Panel

Sento Panel

Hanson Panel

Orissa Panel

Glimpse Panel

Hayworth Panel

Isla Moisture Resistant Panel

Metz Moisture Resistant Panel

Sora Moisture Resistant Panel

Samba Moisture Resistant Panel

Ella Panel

Miro Panel

Akita Panel

Rocha Panel

Memento Panel

Sephora Panel

Alara Panel

Sabina Panel

Titan Panel

Eclipse Panel

Moda Grey Panel

Caress Natural Panel