Koa at Blinds By Post is a real wood venetian that arrives with the motor already built into the deal: the range is sold as Koa Real Wood Motorised and Koa Real Wood With Tapes Motorised, so every make-up we list is powered rather than corded. The naming does a lot of work before you reach a single listing - Real Wood declares the material, With Tapes flags a shutter-look second version - and the 36 finishes from £72.04 read like a timber merchant's order book: Honey Oak, Fired Walnut, Narra Oak, Tuscan Oak and Auburn among the warm entries, Nordic, Kalm Grey and Khol Anthracite among the cool.

Who it suits

A real wood venetian is the premium end of the slatted family: genuine timber slats are lighter than their faux wood copies, carry real grain rather than a printed one, and read as furniture on the window. Add a motor and the range makes most sense in the rooms where you would show it off - living rooms, studies, dining rooms, bedrooms - and at windows that are awkward to reach, since a powered tilt spares you leaning over a sofa, a desk or a stairwell to fiddle with a wand. A powered blind also does away with dangling operating cords, which is worth having anywhere small children roam.

The taped version deserves its own explanation, because tapes change the character of the blind. 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. They give the blind the banded, dressed look of a plantation shutter, and because they hide the routing holes, a taped venetian closes a little more completely - the pinpricks of light that show through a plain venetian disappear behind cloth.

One caution comes with the material: real wood would rather stay out of steam. A bathroom or a busy kitchen window is faux wood territory; Koa belongs in the drier rooms of the house.

The colours

36 colours available

The palette leans warm, as a real wood range should. Honey Oak, Tuscan Oak, Narra Oak and Oregon cover the honest mid-timbers, Auburn and Fired Walnut take the finish darker and redder, and Morena Beige, Perla Cream and Oska soften things towards the painted end. The cool entries are the quietly useful ones: Nordic, Kalm Grey and Khol Anthracite give you timber texture without timber orange, which is where plenty of modern schemes actually live. Woodgrain is exactly what a screen flattens, so treat the thumbnails as a shortlist and order samples - the difference between Honey Oak and Tuscan Oak, or Nordic and Kalm Grey, is an undertone you will only trust in your own light.

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 12 Jun.

Koa starts well above a basic aluminium venetian, and fairly so: you are paying for genuine timber and a motor in the same blind, either of which would lift the figure on its own. Cost climbs with both dimensions - extra drop adds slats, extra width lengthens them and asks more of the motor - and the taped make-up is its own line, so run the table at your measurements for the version you actually mean to buy rather than settling for the entry figure.

How it compares

Against a faux wood venetian, Koa trades moisture-resistance for authenticity: faux wood shrugs off a bathroom but weighs more and never quite carries real grain, while genuine timber is lighter on the headrail and better looking, provided you keep it out of the steam. Against a manual wooden venetian the difference is simply the motor, and against the soft types the usual trade applies - a roman brings fabric warmth, a roller brings simplicity, neither tilts. Koa is a Blinds By Post exclusive among the retailers we track, and the combination it bundles - real wood, motorisation and a taped option in one range - is not a pairing the copy-paste catalogues tend to offer. The trade-off is that there is no cross-shop comparison to run: no other shop lists the range, so the price cannot be second-opinioned the way a widely travelled blind can.

A note on care

Treat the slats like furniture rather than fabric. Dust regularly - tilt the blind closed one way, run a soft dry cloth along the slats, then reverse the tilt for the other faces - and keep water to a minimum: a barely damp cloth for marks, dried promptly, never a soaking, because standing moisture is what warps timber. The tapes want a gentler hand still; spot-clean them with a little mild detergent on a barely damp cloth and avoid scrubbing, which roughens the weave. The motor asks only common sense: keep cleaning water well away from the headrail, and follow the maker's guidance on charging or connection rather than improvising.