Worth doing the blinds before you sell? Do the cheap fixes, skip the shutters.
Spend $400 to $1,500 on the windows a buyer actually looks at, not $12,000 on a fit-out they did not choose. Below is a job-by-job verdict with 2026 Albury costs and a straight DO IT, SKIP IT or ONLY IF against each one.
Spend $400 to $1,500, not $12,000. Replacing broken or missing blinds in the rooms that get photographed, and getting the rest working and clean, is the only window work that reliably pays for itself in an Albury sale. A full plantation shutter fit-out at $6,000 to $18,000 does not: buyers here do not pay a premium for a finish they did not pick, and the money sits in the price either way. What window furnishings do is defensive. They stop a buyer forming the thought that the house has not been looked after, and that thought is worth far more than the blinds are.
Ten pre-sale window jobs, with a verdict on each
These are the jobs Albury sellers ask us about between the appraisal and the first open. Costs are 2026 supplied-and-fitted figures. The verdict is what we would tell a family member.
| The job | What it costs | What it realistically adds or protects | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service every blind in the house: re-level, re-tension, new chains and cleats, clean | $150 to $400 for the whole property in one visit | Nothing jams while a buyer is standing there. Best value on this page by a distance. | Do it |
| Replace broken or missing blinds in the main bedroom and living areas | $600 to $1,500 for 3 to 6 windows | Removes the deferred-maintenance read that invites a discount well past the cost of the work. | Do it |
| Fix cord safety: refit cleats and tension devices through the house | $25 to $60 per blind, often inside a service visit | Keeps a safety hazard line out of the building inspection and off a family buyer list of objections. | Do it |
| Replace faded blockout blinds in the master and the main bedroom | $140 to $280 per window | Bedrooms photograph badly with sun-bleached, streaky fabric, and it is the first room buyers judge. | Do it |
| Match odd blinds so the street frontage reads consistent from the kerb | $120 to $280 per window | Only matters if the front elevation is visibly mismatched in the listing photo. Otherwise nobody notices. | Only if |
| Add sheers to a bare front window that photographs flat and cold | $300 to $550 per window including track | Softens a hard-lit room in photos. Worth it on one or two feature windows, not throughout. | Only if |
| Fit blinds to an uncovered room, such as a converted garage or a new alfresco | $120 to $280 per window | An uncovered window reads as unfinished, which makes buyers wonder what else was never completed. | Only if |
| Full plantation shutters through the house before the campaign | $6,000 to $18,000 at $350 to $650 per square metre | Rarely returns the outlay in this market, and the 6 to 10 week lead time usually blows the campaign date. | Skip it |
| Motorise the blinds so the house shows as smart | $150 to $350 per blind, plus $150 to $350 for a hub | Buyers like it at the open and do not pay for it in the offer. Keep the money. | Skip it |
| Custom curtains in a bold colour to suit your furniture | $450 to $900 per window | The next owner replaces them. Strong colour narrows your buyer pool rather than widening it. | Skip it |
Indicative Albury and Wodonga figures for 2026. Verdicts assume a normal residential sale, not a renovated flip or a high-end custom home.
What buyers actually notice at an open home
Buyers walk a house in a fixed order, whether they know it or not. Light comes first, then smell, then the outlook, then finish. Window furnishings sit inside three of those four, which is why they punch above their cost.
On light: a heavy, dark, dated blockout in a small Lavington bedroom makes the room feel like a cupboard. Buyers do not think about the blind, they think the room is small. Swapping to a light-filter roller at $120 to $240 changes how the room is perceived, and it is the cheapest square-metre illusion in the house. On outlook: an Albury home with a view to the river red gums, the Nail Can Hill escarpment or a decent back garden should have that framed, not fought. A sunscreen roller keeps the view and cuts glare, which is why we put them in west-facing living rooms almost by default.
On finish, buyers touch things. They open and close blinds at inspections, particularly the second inspection when they are already interested and are checking for problems. A blind that skips, jams or drops is remembered. It is not that they price the blind, it is that they start looking for what else has been left. That is the entire argument for the $150 to $400 whole-house service visit at the top of the table.
What buyers do not notice: whether the fabric is a designer range, whether the roller has a fancy pelmet, and whether the blinds match each other room to room inside the house. Consistency matters from the street, not from the hallway.
What ends up in a building or pest report, and what it costs you
A pre-purchase building inspection in Australia is done to a national standard for inspection of residential buildings, and a timber pest inspection is done to its own separate standard. Neither of them is a report on your blinds, so nobody is going to write up faded fabric. Two things do turn up, and both are cheap to prevent.
The first is a safety hazard. Inspectors routinely note observed safety issues, and a looped blind cord hanging where a child could reach it is the classic. It reads badly in a report, it worries a family buyer, and it costs $25 to $60 per blind to fix properly. Our cord safety page shows what compliant looks like.
The second is what the curtains were hiding. Older homes around Central Albury, East Albury and the established parts of West Albury are largely single-glazed, and Albury winters produce heavy morning condensation on glass, especially in a bedroom with the door closed and heavy blockout curtains trapping the air. That water runs down and sits on the timber reveal and the sill. Six winters of that gives you black mould in the paint, swollen timber and sometimes rot, and it absolutely gets written up. Mould in a report is expensive: buyers assume moisture problems, and a $400 sill repair plus a repaint can become a $5,000 conversation about the whole house. Pull the curtains right back and look at your reveals before an inspector does.
Photography in four weeks? Get the measure booked now
Roller blinds are 2 to 3 weeks from order to install. We will tell you honestly whether your date is achievable before you commit to anything.
Fix it, or disclose it and price for it
Every seller faces this choice on something. The test we use is simple: is the defect visible, is it a safety issue, and is it cheap relative to what a buyer will knock off for it?
Fix it when the answer to any of those is yes. Broken and missing blinds, a jamming mechanism, a hazardous cord, a room with no covering at all: all visible, all cheap, all disproportionately expensive if a buyer finds them. A $160 repair prevents a $1,000 haggle, and that ratio is consistent.
Disclose it and leave it when the item is simply old but honest. Twelve-year-old blinds that still work are not a defect, they are a twelve-year-old house detail, and a buyer who is told that is fine with it. Attempting to hide age with a partial replacement is worse than leaving it, because half-new blinds make the old ones look older and make the buyer wonder why only some were done.
The one thing not to do is a cheap cover-up. Flat-pack blinds bought in a standard size and cut down on site cost $60 to $90 a window, hang crooked, and are obvious to anyone who has ever bought a house. They read as a vendor tidying up rather than a home that was maintained, which is the exact impression you were paying to avoid. If the budget will not stretch to made-to-measure on every window, do the front rooms properly and leave the rest.
How long the work needs before a campaign starts
This is where good intentions die. Window furnishings are made to order, so the lead time is real and it runs from the day you approve the quote, not the day you ring us.
- Roller and roman blinds: 2 to 3 weeks to make and install, so allow 4 weeks from first contact to photography.
- Curtains and sheers: 3 to 5 weeks, so allow 6 weeks.
- Plantation shutters: 6 to 10 weeks, so allow 12 weeks. If your agent wants photos in a month, shutters are off the table and there is no point discussing them.
- Repairs and servicing: usually within the week, which is why it is the right answer for a seller who has already listed.
Count backwards from the photography date, not the first open. Photos are taken 1 to 2 weeks before the campaign goes live and they are what most buyers see first, so anything installed after the shoot is invisible to most of your market. If you are inside three weeks, stop thinking about new product. Book a service visit, clean everything, replace the broken bits, and put the money into presentation elsewhere. Our page on ordering lead times covers the seasonal peaks, and the short version is that November and December are the slowest weeks to try to squeeze a rush job through.
Two jobs we tell sellers not to bother with
Do not fit plantation shutters to sell. They are a genuinely good product and we fit a lot of them across Thurgoona, East Albury and the newer Hamilton Valley homes, but the buyer who did not choose the colour, the louvre size or the room is not paying you back for them. At $350 to $520 per square metre for PVC and $450 to $650 for painted basswood, a living area alone runs $3,000 to $6,000 and a whole house runs well past $12,000. If you want shutters, fit them because you want to live with them for a few years. Our blinds versus shutters comparison sets out where each one earns its money.
Do not motorise for the sale. Motorisation adds $150 to $350 per blind and a hub adds $150 to $350 more. It is a genuine lifestyle upgrade for tall stairwell windows, for anyone with mobility issues and for nurseries where cords are a hazard. It is not something a buyer at an Albury open home adds to their offer. Full detail sits on our motorised blinds page if you are staying put.
One honest addition: if the house is tenanted while you sell, the timeframes and notice rules change, and that is set out on our landlord obligations page. And if something breaks in the middle of a campaign, the emergency triage page tells you whether it needs a priority visit or whether it can wait until after Saturday. Costs across every product are on the pricing page.
Selling questions we get asked
Do new blinds add value when you sell a house in Albury?
Will a building inspector write up broken blinds?
How long before the first open home should I order?
Should I replace blinds or just disclose that they are old?
Are plantation shutters worth fitting before a sale?
What is the cheapest thing that actually helps at an open home?
Get the pre-sale window list priced before you commit
Tell us your photography date and we will come out, walk the house and send a written quote within 2 business days, marked up with what we would skip.
Not selling for a couple of years?
Then the maths flips, and the products we told you to skip start making sense. Book the measure and we will price it as a home improvement instead.