The Bella (Blackout) range from So Easy Blinds is a made-to-measure blackout panel blind offered across 48 colour and finish options, starting from £116.34. Panel blinds occupy a specialist corner of the market - they're designed for wide openings and patio doors rather than standard windows - and Bella positions itself as a practical solution within that niche, with a colour range broad enough to suit most room schemes.

Who it suits

Panel blinds are most at home on wide window openings, patio doors, and bi-fold door spans where a single roller or venetian blind wouldn't reach without looking awkward. If you're covering a sliding door in a kitchen-diner or a large living-room window, a panel blind tracks cleanly across the opening in overlapping sections rather than trying to span it in one piece.

The blackout fabric class means Bella is also a reasonable choice for bedrooms with wide or bay windows - the kind of opening where a standard roller would need two separate blinds side by side. The retailer describes this range as blackout, which we take as the retailer's claim rather than an independent test result. As with any blackout fabric, bear in mind that the fabric blocks light transmission but light can still leak around the edges of the track; for complete darkness you may want to consider the gap between panel and wall.

Bella is less useful for standard-width windows where a roller, Roman, or venetian blind would do the job more economically and with fewer running components. If you're covering a single window under around 1.5m wide, a panel blind is probably more blind than you need.

The colours

48 colours available

With 48 finishes, Bella's palette covers more ground than most ranges in this category. The naming convention suggests a mix of neutral tones - Hessian, Vellum, Beige, Oyster, Dove, Cashew, Grey Whisper - alongside bolder statements including Lipstick, Pop, Ruby, Mambo, and Tropez. There are also cooler options: Duck Egg, Mineral, Placid, Glade, and Vine for blue-green directions, and darker anchors in Noir, Midnight, Rock, and Bullet.

The palette leans toward a mid-century and contemporary-neutral sensibility, with enough warm and cool neutrals to work against most wall colours. The bolder finishes - Lipstick, Pop, Mambo - are useful where the blind is intended to be a feature rather than a background element. Note that the range lists 40 named finishes here, with a further 8 omitted from this sample; the full selection at So Easy Blinds may be wider still.

Price by your dimensions

Made to measure from £116.34. Check So Easy Blinds for the price at your exact window size.

With a from-price of £116.34, Bella sits at the higher end of the panel-blind market compared with entry-level roller or venetian options, which is typical for the type - panel blinds carry more hardware (the track, carriers, and multiple fabric panels) than a single-panel blind. The from-price reflects the smallest configuration; wider spans with more panels will cost more. Precise pricing by your width and drop is shown in the grid above.

How it compares

Within the panel-blind category, Bella's main differentiator is the breadth of its colour range: 48 finishes is unusually wide for a specialist blind type that many retailers offer in only a handful of neutrals. If the colour choice is important - for example, matching an existing room scheme - that breadth is genuinely useful.

Against the broader window-covering market, the comparison depends on what problem you're solving. If blackout is the priority for a normal-sized bedroom window, a blackout roller blind in a single panel will generally cost less and involve simpler installation. If you need to cover a wide span with a clean flat-panel look, panel blinds remain one of the tidier solutions.

Vertical blinds cover a similar use case - wide openings, patio doors - and can be found at lower from-prices. The trade-off is aesthetic: vertical vanes have a commercial or office look that doesn't suit every home interior. Bella's flat fabric panels sit closer to the look of a Roman or roller blind and are more neutral in character. If thermal performance matters alongside light blocking, a cellular or honeycomb blind for a wide opening would outperform a flat fabric panel, though that type comes with its own higher cost and typically a narrower colour range.

Fitting and operation

Panel blinds run on a ceiling- or top-mounted track with fabric panels hanging from carriers. The track spans the full width of the opening; panels overlap slightly when closed and stack to one or both sides when open. Installation is more involved than fitting a single-panel roller blind - the track needs to be level and secured across the full span - but the operation itself, pulling panels across the track, is straightforward.

Standard recess-depth requirements apply to inside-recess fitting; for very wide openings an outside (face) fit is often more practical. So Easy Blinds' product page will specify the exact track depths and clearances for this range.