How much blind, curtain and track do you actually need for an Albury house?
A typical four-bedroom Albury house has 13 openings and about 26 square metres of glass to cover, which comes out around $2,000 to $3,800 in blockout roller blinds or $8,200 to $15,800 in PVC plantation shutters. To get your own figure: measure every opening in millimetres, multiply width by height in metres, and add them up. For curtains, allow 2.0 to 2.5 times the track width in fabric and run the track 150mm to 300mm past the reveal on each side for stack-back. The estimator below sizes the job first, then prices it.
Sizing estimator: how many, how many square metres, and roughly what that costs
Move the two sliders to your own window count and total glass area. The quantities show beside each slider, and the estimate updates as you go. This is a ballpark for Albury and Wodonga in 2026, not a quote: a firm price always needs someone measuring in your house.
What this estimate assumes
- Supplied and installed across Albury, Lavington, Thurgoona, East and West Albury and Wodonga, GST included, at 2026 rates.
- Standard fabric or louvre ranges, white componentry, and chain control unless you tick motorisation.
- Single-storey access with a parking space near the door. Two-storey and void windows are the ladder-access tick.
- Shutters are quoted per square metre in the real world, so if your house has a lot of small windows the shutter estimate lands in the upper half of the range. A house with a few large openings lands in the lower half.
- Curtain pricing assumes a standard track and a 2.2 times fullness. Wave or S-fold headings, motorised tracks and pattern-repeat fabrics push it up.
- Excludes electrical work for hardwired motors, pelmet joinery, plaster repair and anything external such as awnings or outdoor roller shutters.
- This is a guide only. A fixed price needs an in-home measure of every opening, which is free and carries no obligation.
How to measure it properly with a tape and a phone
You need a steel tape, a pencil, a notepad and your phone. Fabric tapes stretch and will cost you 5mm to 10mm on a wide window, which is the difference between a blind that seals and one that leaks a stripe of light. Write everything in millimetres, never centimetres. A manufacturer reads 1450 and makes a 1450mm blind; they read 145 and stop to ring somebody, and that is a day lost.
- Measure the window, never the old blind. The old blind may have been wrong for twenty years. Take the opening as it is today.
- Width in three places. Top, middle and bottom of the reveal. For a reveal fit, use the smallest of the three. Older Central and East Albury houses are routinely 10mm to 25mm out of square between top and bottom, so this step is not optional here.
- Height in three places. Left, centre and right. For a blind that has to reach the sill, use the longest.
- Check the depth of the reveal. Measure from the face of the architrave back to the glass or the window frame. A single roller wants about 50mm to 60mm of clear depth to sit fully inside, a double roller wants 90mm to 110mm, and a plantation shutter frame wants 65mm to 90mm depending on louvre size. Less than that and the answer is a face fit, which is fine but changes the size you order.
- Note the obstructions. Window winders on awning sashes need 40mm to 50mm of clearance and are everywhere in 1970s and 1980s Lavington and Glenroy brick veneers. Also check tiled splashback returns in the kitchen, sliding door handles, alarm sensors, and any air conditioner sitting under the window.
- Photograph every window. One photo with the tape in shot across the width, one straight-on photo of the whole opening, and a wide shot of the room showing which way it faces. Name the photos by room as you go.
- Write it up as a list. Room, opening, width in millimetres, height in millimetres, reveal or face fit, product. That list is what turns an hour of measuring into a usable quote.
None of this replaces the free measure. It gets you a realistic budget before anyone comes out, and it means the measure appointment is a conversation about light and privacy instead of forty minutes of us reading numbers off a tape.
Got your list? Send it through
Give us your room-by-room sizes and we will come back with a written indication, then confirm it at the free measure.
The rules of thumb and the allowances to add
Area, and the 10 percent you forget
Total area is the sum of width in metres times height in metres for every opening. Round each one up to the nearest tenth of a square metre; nobody is machining these to two decimal places. Then, if you plan on face-fit blinds rather than reveal fit, add about 10 percent to the total, because a face-fit blind is deliberately wider and taller than the hole it covers.
The blockout overlap allowance
Even a perfectly fitted reveal blind leaves a 5mm to 8mm gap down each side, because the blind has to clear the reveal to roll. In a west-facing Albury bedroom that gap is a bright stripe on the wall at 7am in January. If you want genuine blockout, order a face fit with 60mm to 80mm of overlap each side and 150mm above the opening, or add side channels. That single decision does more for summer sleep than any fabric upgrade, and it is why the fabric specification page keeps pointing at mount type rather than product name.
Curtain fullness and fabric widths
Curtain fabric quantity is driven by fullness, not by window size. Allow 2.0 times the track width as a minimum and 2.2 to 2.5 times to look right, for both pinch pleat and S-fold wave headings. Under 2.0 the curtain hangs flat and reads as cheap from across the room. Most decorator fabrics are woven 137cm to 150cm wide, so a 3m track at 2.2 fullness needs about 6.6m of fabric width, which is five widths joined. Many blockout and sheer fabrics are also made in wide width at 280cm to 300cm, which can be turned sideways, or railroaded, for any drop under about 2.8m. That eliminates the vertical joins and usually cuts the fabric quantity, so it is always worth asking whether your chosen fabric comes in wide width.
Pattern repeat wastage
If the fabric has a printed or woven repeat, every drop has to start at the same point in the pattern, so you add one full repeat to each drop. A 64cm repeat on a 2.4m drop adds roughly 25 percent to the fabric quantity. Plain fabrics and textured weaves have no repeat and no wastage. If the budget is tight, choosing a plain is a bigger saving than choosing a cheaper printed fabric.
Track length and stack-back
Run the track 150mm to 300mm past the reveal on each side. A heavy blockout pair stacks into roughly 15 to 20 percent of the track width per side, so a 2.4m window really wants a 3.0m to 3.2m track if you want the glass clear when the curtains are open. Sheers stack tighter, around 10 to 15 percent. Getting this wrong is the most common complaint we hear about curtains installed by somebody else: the room is dark even with the curtains pulled back, because a third of the glass is behind fabric.
Drop lengths
Floor-length curtains on a track should finish about 10mm off the floor so they clear carpet and do not drag. Add a 20mm to 30mm break if you want them to just kiss the floor. Sill-length curtains finish about 15mm below the sill. Roller blinds on a reveal fit finish at the sill; on a face fit, take them 50mm to 100mm below the sill so light does not spill underneath.
Width limits, and when one blind becomes two
A 38mm roller tube is comfortable to about 2.1m wide. A 45mm tube handles about 3.0m. Beyond that the tube deflects under the weight of the fabric, the blind rolls unevenly and it becomes heavy to operate. A 3.6m sliding door is two linked blinds on a shared bracket, which looks like one blind from three metres away. Shutters have their own limit: panels are generally kept under about 700mm wide to stop them sagging on the hinges, so a 2.4m opening becomes four panels and those four panels need somewhere to fold or slide, which is a decision about bi-fold or track layout rather than about size. Our plantation shutters page explains the configurations.
The sizing mistake that costs the most in Albury
It is not a fraction of a millimetre. It is measuring a new build too early. In the new estates around Thurgoona, Hamilton Valley and Baranduda, four trades move a reveal after the windows go in: the plasterer, the tiler, the architrave carpenter and the floor layer. Between them they change an opening by 5mm to 20mm. Order off the pre-plaster measurement and the blind will be short, the reveal fit will not seal, and the shutter frame will not sit flush. A remake costs the full price of that item again, plus another 2 to 3 weeks on blinds and 6 to 10 weeks on shutters, and it happens after you have moved in. The fix is free: book a check measure once flooring and architraves are done, which our new build page sets out in the right order.
The second most expensive mistake is measuring the existing blind rather than the window, which quietly copies somebody else's error forward. Third is forgetting stack-back on curtains. Fourth is ordering a single blind across a wide sliding door to save $60. Every one of those is caught by having someone measure who does it for a living, which is the honest argument for a free measure over a self-measure, and our DIY versus professional page is straight about where self-measure genuinely does work.
Worked example: a four-bedroom Lavington house
Here is a real shape of house we quote most weeks: single-storey brick veneer, aluminium windows, living areas facing north and west. Twelve windows plus one sliding door.
| Room and opening | Width | Height | Area | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main bedroom | 1800mm | 1500mm | 2.7 m² | West aspect, face fit for blockout |
| Bedroom 2 | 1500mm | 1200mm | 1.8 m² | Reveal fit, winder clearance needed |
| Bedroom 3 | 1500mm | 1200mm | 1.8 m² | Reveal fit |
| Bedroom 4 or study | 1200mm | 1200mm | 1.5 m² | South aspect, light filter is enough |
| Ensuite | 600mm | 900mm | 0.6 m² | Wet area, PVC shutter or waterproof blind |
| Bathroom | 900mm | 900mm | 0.8 m² | Wet area |
| Laundry | 900mm | 600mm | 0.6 m² | High window, small |
| Kitchen over sink | 1500mm | 900mm | 1.4 m² | Tiled return, face fit |
| Dining | 1800mm | 1500mm | 2.7 m² | North aspect |
| Living window | 2400mm | 1500mm | 3.6 m² | 45mm tube, or two blinds |
| Living sliding door | 3600mm | 2100mm | 7.6 m² | Two linked blinds, not one |
| Entry or hallway | 600mm | 1500mm | 0.9 m² | Narrow, often skipped |
| Internal garage door window | 900mm | 900mm | 0.8 m² | Low priority |
| Total | 13 openings | 14 blinds | 26.8 m² | Sliding door counts twice on the order |
Round that to 13 openings and 26 square metres and drop it into the estimator above. Blockout rollers throughout come back at about $2,000 to $3,800. The mid-tier mix we usually recommend, with double rollers in the living, dining and kitchen and PVC shutters in the two wet rooms, lands closer to $4,200 to $6,500, which matches the middle tier on our whole-house budget page. Full basswood shutters across the same 26 square metres would be $10,000 or more, which is exactly why almost nobody does shutters everywhere and most people put them where they earn their keep.
Two quantities that fall out of the same list. If you were doing curtains rather than blinds on the living window and the sliding door, the tracks would be about 3.0m and 4.0m long once you add stack-back, and at 2.2 fullness that is roughly 6.6m and 8.8m of fabric width, which is 5 widths and 6 widths in a 150cm goods, or two railroaded cuts in a wide-width fabric. And if you were motorising, you would only motorise the sliding door pair and the living window, which is three motors, not fourteen.
When you need less than you think
Plenty of houses do not need every opening covered, and we will say so at the measure rather than quietly quoting the lot. A frosted bathroom window that faces your own fence does not need a blind at all. A high laundry window with no line of sight from anywhere is decoration. An entry sidelight often looks better bare. A garage internal window and a south-facing hallway can wait forever. On the 13-opening house above, three of those openings are genuinely optional, which is roughly $400 to $700 you can keep and spend on doing the main bedroom properly instead.
A note on what we do not do, so the sizing is honest. We measure and fit internal window furnishings only. If your west wall needs an external awning or an outdoor roller shutter, that is a different trade and a different quantity calculation, and we will tell you at the measure rather than selling you an internal product that cannot fix an external heat problem. We also do not do the electrical work for hardwired motors, which a licensed electrician handles before we arrive.
Measuring and quantity questions
How do I measure a window for a blind?
How many square metres of blind does a typical Albury house need?
How much fabric do made-to-measure curtains need?
How much wider than the window should a curtain track be?
How wide can a single roller blind be?
What sizing mistake costs Albury homeowners the most?
Keep reading
- Which fabric grade and shutter material suits Albury conditions
- Budget, mid and premium tiers for a whole house
- What happens on measure and installation day
- Warranties, and what to do if something fails
- Roller blinds, tube sizes and control options
- Curtains, tracks, headings and fullness
- Blinds and shutters cost in Albury
Send us your window list and we will size it properly
Give us your rough sizes or just the room count, and we will reply within 1 business day with measure times and an honest indication.
Let us do the measuring
Free in-home measure across Albury, Lavington, Thurgoona, East and West Albury and Wodonga. Written quote within 2 business days.