A Property Manager's Guide: Best Blinds for Apartments

 Managing a large rental property with many units requires a lot of design decisions. Whether you’re refreshing your property or doing a full-on renovation, choosing the best blinds for apartments can help upgrade the units and make them more appealing to potential tenants. Here are our top five window treatments for apartments that are both durable and affordable:

Mini Blinds

Mini blinds offer the best combination of durability and affordability, making them an ever-popular choice among landlords. Mini blinds are made out of coated aluminum, which makes them extremely durable, so they can stand up to hard use from tenants. They’re more likely to bend than break, and they will have to be replaced less often than a lot of other options on this list. 

The slats are 1 inch wide (instead of the typical 2 inches), which is why these are called mini blinds. Despite their advantages, mini blinds are sometimes associated with a “cheaper” feel, so if you are trying to compete with other luxury apartments in your area, you might want to opt for faux wood blinds instead.

Faux Wood Blinds

Faux wood blinds offer the look and feel of wood blinds, but with more durability and a lower price tag. Faux wood blinds are made of a mixture of PVC and wood fibers, which makes them more hard-wearing and, in particular, more moisture resistant, which is why they’re an excellent choice for bathrooms, basements, and other damp spaces. Due to their mixed materials, faux wood blinds are also less expensive than real wood blinds—another advantage in their favor. 

Due to the combination of durability and affordability, many landlords of more upscale apartments opt for faux wood blinds. If you’ve got a bit more room in your budget, upgrading from mini blinds to faux wood blinds is never a bad idea.

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Vertical Blinds

Sometimes, horizontal blinds just won’t fit the dimensions of your window, and this is especially true for large windows and sliding glass doors. Many apartments feature a sliding glass door that opens onto a balcony, so lots of landlords end up pairing vertical blinds with another window treatment on this list to cover the whole apartment. 

Vertical blinds are made of PVC, faux wood, or fabric; most apartments go with PVC due its lower price tag and higher durability. As an added bonus, vertical blinds can be entirely pushed to the side, giving easy access to the door or window. If you’re an apartment manager who needs affordable window shades, definitely consider vertical blinds.

Roller Shades

While most people assume fabric window treatments will automatically be more expensive, roller shades can be quite affordable, depending on what type of fabric you choose. Roller shades are made of an unobtrusive roll of fabric that fits within the window sill; you roll it up and down to cover as much or as little of the window as you want. Roller shades offer varying levels of coverage, from light filtering to total blackout, so you can pick and choose what’s best for your residents’ tastes. 

If you live in a very competitive area with a lot of apartments for rent, upgrading your units with a more unique window treatment, such as roller shades, can definitely help set it apart.

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Cellular Shades

While not the most durable pick of the lot, cellular shades are good for insulation and energy efficiency. If your apartment building tends to be an ice box in the winter and a furnace in the summer, it might be worth getting cellular shades to help even out the temperatures and save on energy costs. 

Cellular shades are made of two or three layers of fabrics pressed together; when the blinds are fully extended, the shades make honeycomb-shaped cells that can be seen from the side; hence, the name. Cellular shades come in single and double layers of cells, with the double layers providing more insulation. Since these window treatments are fabric, they don’t last as long as other shades made out of PVC or aluminum. However, if your building really struggles with insulation, this might be worth the tradeoff.

Let Us Be Your Guide

Refer back to this guide whenever you’re in need of some new blinds  for apartments. If you’re trying to renovate a very large building, or multiple properties at once, it might be worth looking into commercial window shades instead of buying them in smaller numbers. And when you're ready to make the transition, make sure you know how to replace blinds in your rental units first.