The Sweet Dreams range is a made-to-measure vertical blind sold by English Blinds, rated blackout and available in 56 colour variants from £8.61. Where most vertical blind collections lean on a handful of neutrals, this one extends well into bolder territory - making it an option for rooms where a plain cream or grey vane would feel like an afterthought.

Who it suits

Vertical blinds are best suited to wide openings: patio doors, conservatory windows, and floor-to-ceiling glazing where a roller or roman blind would require an unusually wide stack. The Sweet Dreams range works in any of these settings where blackout performance matters - a conservatory bedroom or ground-floor room overlooking a street are obvious candidates.

The blackout rating makes it viable for bedrooms, though note that vertical vanes leave small light gaps where they meet unless the track is set to a slight overlap. If complete darkness is the goal, combine with a heavier side-fixing method or a second layer. In living rooms and dining rooms where some daytime light is welcome, a dimout fabric would often be a better choice - blackout in these spaces can make a room feel sealed rather than filtered.

Kitchens and bathrooms are poor fits for fabric vanes unless the fabric is PVC-backed; check with the retailer whether the Sweet Dreams fabric is moisture-resistant before ordering for a wet room.

The colours

56 colours available

The palette runs from clean neutrals - Beige, Putty, Oyster, Vellum, Dove - through greyed tones like Mineral, Modesty, and Placid, and into stronger ground with Chilli, Lipstick, Ruby, and Venom. The blues are well-represented: Duck Egg, Arcadia, Sapphire, Midnight, Como, and Brittany span the range from soft to deep. There are also greens (Grama, Glade, Vine), warm browns (Havana, Chocolate, Portobello), and near-blacks (Noir, Mono, Rock).

The 40 names shown here represent the bulk of the range, with a further 16 finishes beyond those listed - so the full collection of 56 covers more ground still. The breadth is unusual for a vertical blind range, which tends to be offered in a smaller palette than rollers or romans. Whether you want something that disappears into the wall or something that reads as a deliberate colour choice, there is likely an option here.

Price by your dimensions

Enter your window size. We round up to the next standard size, which matches how the retailer actually quotes you.

At a from-price of £8.61, the Sweet Dreams range sits at the entry end of the made-to-measure vertical blind market. Prices rise with width and drop, so larger patio-door installations will cost considerably more than the from-price suggests - use the grid to find the actual cost for your dimensions.

How it compares

Against other blackout vertical blinds, the Sweet Dreams range's main argument is colour breadth: 56 options is a large count for verticals, which often come in 10-20 finishes. If the colour choice is unimportant and you want the lowest possible price, a plain-palette blackout vertical may undercut it. If you need moisture resistance for a kitchen or bathroom, a PVC-vane vertical would be a more reliable choice than a fabric-backed one.

Compared to blackout rollers in a similar price bracket, vertical blinds are harder to make fully light-tight but much easier to operate across a wide span. For a standard bedroom window, a roller is typically the tidier solution; for anything over 2 metres wide or where the opening is a door, the vertical format justifies itself.

Fitting and operation

Vertical blinds are top-hung from a track, with vanes rotating to control the angle of light and sliding along the track to open the aperture. Most standard verticals, including this type, use 89mm-wide vanes - the common size for domestic use. The track accepts both recess and face-fix installations, so it works whether your window has a deep reveal or the glazing sits close to the wall.

Vane weights and a bottom chain link the vanes to prevent swinging in draughts, which is worth confirming is included in the supplied hardware when ordering.