Shutters in Reading

Smart Blinds & Shutters makes and fits plantation shutters across Reading, Caversham, Tilehurst, Earley, Woodley and the villages along the Thames. We measure, we fit, and the same people do both. The showroom is at 26 High Street in Thatcham, about seventeen miles west along the A4, and we have worked out of it since 1995.

Shutters are the thing Reading asks us for most. Blinds and the rest of the range have their own page.

Which style suits which window

Six styles, and the window usually picks one rather than you having to.

Full height runs floor to head in one set of panels. It's the plainest of the six and it's what most Victorian terraces off the Oxford Road and the Caversham Road end up with, because the openings are tall and narrow and anything busier fights the room.

Tier on tier splits the panels at the transom so the top and bottom open separately. Edwardian semis in Caversham Heights and Emmer Green have the tall sash windows this was made for: shut the bottom for the street, leave the top open for the light.

Cafe style covers the lower half only. It works on a kitchen or a front room that faces a pavement, and it costs less than a full set because there's less of it.

Tracked panels slide rather than swing, which is what you want across wide patio or bi-fold openings. Shaped panels are cut to an arch, an angle or a circle. Solid panels have no louvres at all, for a blackout or a period-correct finish.

Hardwood or faux wood

Both are made to order by a global shutter manufacturer and both come in our standard painted finishes or any colour you want matched. Hardwood takes a paint or a stain better and is the usual answer for a living room or a bedroom. Faux wood doesn't mind steam or splashes, so it goes in bathrooms, en suites and over kitchen sinks. A bay window in Caversham often ends up with hardwood in the front room and faux wood upstairs, which is fine: they're made in the same factory and finished to match.

There's a brochure on the shutters page if you want to see the ranges before anyone comes out.

What a set of shutters costs

We don't publish a price list, because a shutter is priced per opening and no two Reading houses have the same openings. What moves the number: the size of the window, how many panels it takes, whether it is hardwood or faux, the finish, and whether the opening is square or shaped. A bay is three or four separate frames rather than one, so it's priced that way.

You get the figure at the home visit, in writing, with no obligation and nothing to pay for the visit itself. If a quote is going to come in higher than you expected, we'd rather say so in your front room than after you've paid a deposit.

The guarantee

Shutters carry 36 months from the date of order, covering the shutters and the fitting work. That's three times the cover on a standard blind and it's set out in clause 9.2 of our terms and conditions rather than being a sales line. Reading sits outside the five-mile radius of the Thatcham showroom, so a warranty visit carries a £50 call-out, and that applies to shutters anywhere.

Booking a home visit

Call 01635 866600 or use the contact page. One of us comes to you with the sample frames and the finish cards, measures every opening, and quotes on the spot. Shutters are made to order, so there's a lead time between the order and the fitting day, and we give you the date at the point of ordering rather than a vague window.

We fit shutters across the rest of the county too. Shutters in Newbury covers West Berkshire, and the Berkshire page lists every town we cover. Our work has photographs of finished jobs.