Most plain rollers make you take whatever light control the fabric happens to offer. Ella, at Blinds By Post, splits that decision out properly: the range runs to 4 colourways from £13.98, and the listing carries the fabric in more than one guise - plain Ella for softened daylight, Ella Blackout for rooms that need the light stopped, and a blackout cassette make-up that boxes the roll into a headrail. Motorised versions are on the card too. With a from-price at the accessible end of made-to-measure rollers and the same range name on sale at three other UK shops, Ella is a small range that repays a little homework.
Who it suits
The standard Ella is the everyday blind: daytime privacy and softened light for kitchens, studies and sitting rooms. The Blackout version is the one to carry into bedrooms, nurseries and any room that hosts shift-work sleep or a projector, because a blackout cloth stops light passing through the fabric itself - the difference you notice at five on a June morning. One piece of honest expectation-setting: fitted inside the recess, even a blackout roller lets a rim of light creep around its edges, since the fabric has to clear the walls. If total gloom is the target, fit outside the recess with a generous overlap, and consider the blackout cassette, whose headrail closes off the glow that otherwise slips over the top of the roll.
The motorised route serves the usual suspects: tall glass, windows behind furniture, and households that want no looped chain within a child's reach.
The colours
4 colours available
Four names with a botanical lilt: Alba, Aspin, Este and Tilia. Alba is Latin for white, which at least gestures towards the pale end; Tilia is the botanist's name for the lime tree; Aspin and Este keep their intentions to themselves. Read the set as a mood rather than a chart and let the swatches above do the talking. One practical note peculiar to this range: if you are pairing rooms - standard Ella in the living room, Blackout next door in the bedroom - sample the same shade in both versions, because a fabric that no longer lets light through can read differently at the window from its light-filtering twin.
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 around its usual level (checked since 12 Jun).
The from-price belongs to the smallest window in the simplest make-up, and everything scales from there with width and drop. The blackout, cassette and motorised versions each price differently for the same glass, which is why this range resists a single headline figure - the like-for-like check is your measurements, in your chosen version, in the table above. Decide the job first, then price it: a bedroom that truly needs the Blackout saves nothing by trying the standard cloth first.
How it compares
Ella travels beyond this shop: Blinds Direct, Roller Blinds Direct and So Easy Blinds list the same range name, and prices differ between shops for the same window, so the shop that comes out ahead depends on your measurements rather than your habits. Our Ella roller comparison runs the check across all four at once. Within Blinds By Post, Ella's edge over the other quiet plains is the blackout option itself: plenty of ranges can match a calm palette shade for shade, but a family that covers the living room and the bedroom in one fabric saves you colour-matching across two ranges - and that, more than any single shade, is Ella's story.
A note on care
The standard fabric asks for standard roller care: dust with the blind fully down, blot marks with a barely damp cloth, and let it dry before it rolls away. Give the Blackout slightly gentler treatment. Whatever a maker uses to stop light lives in or on the cloth, so hard scrubbing risks a polished patch that shows against the matt face - blot, and stop early. Creases matter more on a blackout too, since a sharp fold can show as a pale line when the sun hits the back of the blind; letting it hang fully lowered for a day usually relaxes minor ones. Cassettes want an occasional duster along the slot, and motors want nothing more than a dry wipe and to be left alone.
Likely the same fabric, at other retailers
Ella roller 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:
- Blinds By Post this page from £13.98
- Roller Blinds Direct from £17.86
- Blinds Direct from £19.61
- Wilsons Blinds from £21.01
- So Easy Blinds from £68.15
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.