Blinds for a new build in Pakenham.

The handover gap.

In the Cardinia growth corridor, thousands of homes hand over every year across Cardinia Lakes, Arena, Heritage Springs, Lakeside, Riverbank and the Officer estates. Standard volume-builder contracts finish at paint, flooring and a driveway. Window furnishings are not in them. So on the day you get the keys, every window is bare, and that is the moment most people discover how close the neighbour's kitchen window is on a 400 square metre block. Nearly everyone in these estates buys blinds within a few weeks of moving in, and the ones who plan for it get a better result for the same money.

Timing: quote early, measure late.

This is the part that saves money and heartache. There are two separate events and they should happen at different times.

Quoting can happen months out. Send us your builder's window schedule or the plan and we can give you a realistic budget, talk through fabrics, and work out which rooms need what. That is enough to plan your spend before settlement, and it costs nothing.

Measuring must wait for the finished house. Plaster thickness, architrave depth, and the final reveal all move between the drawing and the built house, typically by 5mm to 15mm. A blind manufactured from a plan is the single most common reason a new-estate blind hangs crooked or leaves a light gap. We measure the week you get keys, and blinds are normally installed two to three weeks later. If you want them up on day one, that is not how made-to-measure works, and anyone who promises it is either quoting standard sizes or measuring off a plan.

Builder packs versus an independent quote.

Many builders offer a window furnishing upgrade through a preferred supplier. It is genuinely convenient: one contract, one payment, and blinds already in when you arrive. The trade-offs are worth knowing before you tick the box.

• Fabric choice is usually limited to one or two ranges, in a small palette.
• It is priced as a package, so you cannot see what any individual window costs, and you cannot decline the rooms that do not need it.
• The specification is generally the base product: corded, no channels, no double rollers, no motors.
• You are locked to the builder's schedule, so a delayed handover delays the blinds too.

None of that makes it a bad deal. It makes it a deal worth comparing. Get the pack price in writing, then get an independent quote on the same house, and compare line by line. Current ranges are on the Pakenham cost guide.

The three windows that cause the trouble.

The stacker or sliding door.

Wide, used every day, and the blind has to clear the handle and the track without fouling. Options are a wide roller (or two rollers on one headrail if it is very wide), or a vertical blind that stacks clear of the opening leaf. It is also the window most worth motorising, because you will operate it more than any other blind in the house.

The void or stairwell window.

Almost every double-storey estate plan has one, and almost nobody can reach it. A chain three metres up is useless and a pole is a two-person job. This is the strongest case for a motor in the whole house, at $150 to $350 for that blind, and it is the difference between a blind you use and a blind you leave open permanently.

The front bedroom window.

On a small estate block the front bedroom is close to the footpath. A sunscreen fabric will not give privacy once the lights are on, which surprises people. That room wants blockout or a light-filter fabric. The full explanation is in blockout versus sunscreen.

Two new-build specifics people miss.

Condensation in the first two winters. A new slab and fresh plaster release moisture for twelve to eighteen months, and a tightly sealed new home has nowhere to put it. You will get water on bedroom windows on cold mornings. Choose wipeable fabrics, do not clamp the blind hard against the glass, and lift the blinds during the day so the glass and sill can dry.

Corded blinds and small children. Estate homes skew heavily toward young families. Corded internal blinds are subject to a mandatory ACCC consumer product safety standard, and cordless or motorised operation removes the hazard altogether. If you are specifying a whole house from scratch, it is far cheaper to choose cordless now than to retrofit later. See child-safe blinds.

A sensible order to do it in.

If the budget will not stretch to the whole house on day one, do it in this order: bedrooms first for privacy and sleep, then the west-facing living and dining for heat and glare, then the front-facing rooms, then everything else. Nobody needs a blind on a south-facing laundry window in week one. Staging over three or four months is completely normal and we will keep the fabric details on file so the second stage matches the first.

Frequently asked questions.