The Charisma Tape range at Unbeatable Blinds is a made-to-measure faux-wood venetian with a twist: every one of its 45 colourways, from £7.90, pairs a slat finish with a cloth tape. Tapes are the woven ladder strips that run down the face of a venetian, covering the cord holes punched through each slat and carrying a colour of their own. On a plain venetian the cords are left on show; here the dressing is the point. If you simply want bare faux-wood slats this range is answering a question you have not asked, but if you like the banded, plantation-shutter look, the tape pairing is exactly what you are shopping for.
Who it suits
Faux-wood venetians earn their keep in kitchens and bathrooms. The slats shrug off the steam and splashes that would warp real timber, wipe clean without fuss, and tilt for privacy without shutting out the day - you can angle them to block a neighbour's sightline while still letting light onto a worktop. Every colourway here is a faux-wood finish, so that moisture tolerance runs across the whole palette.
The tapes add two things. Cosmetically they give the blind the dressed, heritage look of a plantation shutter and introduce a second colour to work with. Practically, because they cover the routing holes in each slat, a taped venetian closes a touch more completely than an untaped one - the pinpricks of light that show through a standard venetian's cord holes are hidden behind cloth.
Look elsewhere if you need real darkness: any venetian, taped or not, leaks light at the edges and between slats, so a bedroom that must go black wants a blackout roller fitted tight to the recess. Very wide openings are also better served by a vertical blind or a pair of blinds, since faux wood is a heavy material and a large single span becomes weighty to lift.
The colours
45 colours available
Think of the palette as slat finish multiplied by tape colour rather than a straight colour list. The crispest pairings put black tape on white slats - Bright White with Black, or White Fine Grain with Black - a high-contrast monochrome that reads as deliberately tailored. The timber end pairs Light Oak slats with Toffee or Truffle tapes for a warm, tonal effect, while Cream with Barley and Ivory Fine Grain with Hessian sit in the soft, sandy middle. Grey does the heaviest lifting: Dark Grey Fine Grain with Slate, Grey Driftwood Fine Grain with Lunar, Light Grey with Dove, Light Grey Fine Grain with Steel - some pairings tone-on-tone, others gently contrasting.
The finishes marked Fine Grain suggest a more pronounced woodgrain texture than the smooth slats. That texture, and the weave of the tapes themselves, is exactly what a screen flattens, so order samples before committing - a tape colour that looks safe in a thumbnail can read far stronger running in bands down a full-height blind.
Price by your dimensions
Enter your window size. We round up to the next standard size, which matches how the retailer actually quotes you.
No price movement in our checks since 23 Jun.
The from-price buys the smallest window the range is made for, and the cost climbs with both width and drop - width especially, since every extra centimetre of width is another run of slat material. Use the table above with your own measurements rather than judging the range on its entry figure.
How it compares
Against a plain faux-wood venetian, the Charisma Tape asks one more decision of you - a tape colour as well as a slat colour - and pays it back with a far more finished face. It is the closest a blind gets to the look of plantation shutters without the joinery, and unlike shutters it still lifts fully clear of the glass. Against the soft types, a roman or roller gives fabric warmth where this gives structure; neither wipes down after a steamy shower the way faux wood does.
The range is an Unbeatable Blinds exclusive among the retailers we track. The trade-off is that you cannot cross-shop it: no second retailer cuts the same range, so there is no price comparison to run for your window. The upside is a range the identikit catalogues do not carry - taped, two-colour faux woods in this many pairings are not something you will see repeated from shop to shop.
A note on care
The slats are the easy half: dust them regularly with a soft cloth, tilting them closed one way and then the other to reach both faces, and wipe with a damp cloth when kitchen film builds up - moisture will not harm faux wood. The cloth tapes want a gentler hand. Spot-clean them with a barely damp cloth and a little mild detergent rather than soaking, and avoid scrubbing, which can roughen the weave. Check occasionally that the blind hangs level, and raise a wide blind evenly rather than hauling on one side.