The Bella range at Shade & Story is a made-to-measure vertical blind in 16 colourways from £27.00, sold through the brand's partnership with John Lewis. Bella is one of the most widely stocked louvre cloths in the UK trade, and Shade & Story's version is a deliberately tight edit of it: a neutrals-led palette with a run of blues and one or two personality shades, rather than the exhaustive shade card other shops cut from the same fabric.
Who it suits
Vertical blinds earn their keep on wide openings - patio doors, conservatories and long window runs - where the louvres tilt to steer daylight and then draw fully aside to clear the glass. Bella's fabric is a standard light-filtering weave, so it softens and screens rather than blacks out: right for living spaces and home offices that want daytime privacy with the light left on, wrong on its own for a bedroom that must be dark at dawn.
A practical virtue of any vertical is that the louvres are individually replaceable, so a slat chewed by a dog or bleached on a sun-facing edge can be swapped without replacing the blind - worth remembering on a patio door that gets daily traffic. Fitting is straightforward for a competent DIYer: the headrail mounts to the top of the recess or the wall above it, and the louvres clip on afterwards, which keeps even a three-metre blind manageable to hang single-handed.
The colours
16 colours available
The edit reads as a decorator's shortlist rather than a catalogue. Whites and off-whites (Paper White, Snow White, Ivory Off White) cover the safe end; a natural run - Almond, Oyster, Natural Hessian, Mocha Brown - brings the warmer, textural tones that suit wood floors and rattan; and the blues stretch from Duck Egg through Smoke Blue to a properly dark Midnight Blue. Black and Blush Pink bookend the palette for schemes with more conviction, and the improbably named Boujee sits somewhere between a colour and a mission statement. Screen rendering flatters some of these tones and dulls others, so a sample order is the sensible last step before committing a whole door's worth of louvres.
Price by your dimensions
Enter your window size. We round up to the next standard size, which matches how the retailer actually quotes you.
Price up 11% since 1 Aug. (our checks since 4 Jul)
Vertical blinds are among the more affordable ways to dress a very wide opening, and the price table above shows Bella made to your measurements. As with any made-to-measure blind, width does most of the work on the final figure, so a quote at your actual sizes tells you far more than the from-price.
How it compares
Bella's distinguishing feature at Shade & Story is the curation, not the cloth. The same Bella name appears at several other UK retailers - some cutting it in far larger shade cards, at prices that differ meaningfully for the same window - so it is worth a look at our Bella vertical comparison before ordering: colour availability, fittings and price all move between shops even when the underlying fabric does not. Within Shade & Story's own range, Bella is the soft-fabric vertical option; buyers who want a harder-wearing louvre for a bathroom should weigh a PVC-based range instead, and anyone needing real darkness behind a wide opening should consider a blackout vertical or a pair of blackout rollers.
A note on care
Louvres respond best to little and often. Run a vacuum's soft brush down each slat every few weeks, draw the blind to one side and check the linking chain and base weights are hanging straight, and lift marks with a damp cloth and mild detergent, letting the louvre dry fully before drawing the blind closed. Avoid soaking or machine-washing a stiffened louvre - it can lose the body that keeps it hanging flat.
Likely the same fabric, at other retailers
Bella vertical blinds are sold under the same name by more than one UK retailer, and the price scales identically across window sizes - a strong sign it is the same fabric from the same supplier:
- Swift Direct Blinds from £9.00
- Blinds By Post from £10.70
- Blinds Direct from £14.18
- Vertical Blinds Direct from £21.78
- Shade & Story this page from £27.00
- So Easy Blinds from £51.57
- Wilsons Blinds from £65.41
We match these on the shared name and an identical price curve, not an independent inspection, so treat it as likely the same fabric rather than confirmed - and check the specification and colour at each retailer before buying.