Properly Dark, Not Nearly Dark
Made-to-measure blockout blinds for Brisbane homes — measured to the wall rather than to the glass, so the room actually goes dark. Specified by us, made from premium Australian-made product and fitted by the installers we have used for years.
Why Lusso, Brisbane
We Measure To The Wall, Not The Glass
Every blockout fabric sold in this country stops light. That part is solved, and it has been for years. The reason your last blockout blind still left a bright outline at six in the morning is that it was made to the size of the window rather than the size of the opening — and in Brisbane’s timber housing stock, that difference is bigger than it is almost anywhere else.
The range
Local conditions
Old Timber, Thin Frames, No Reveal
Drive through Paddington, Bulimba or Camp Hill and most of what you are looking at is timber. Queenslanders, post-war cottages, chamfer board and VJ — and the windows in them sit in thin frames with the architrave running straight up against the sash. There is often no reveal worth the name, which means the blind goes on the face of the wall instead of inside the opening. That one fact, decided before anyone has chosen a fabric, is what settles whether the room goes dark.
Then there is what the bracket screws into. A hardwood stud will hold anything you put on it. A sheet of VJ pine over a cavity, or a brick-veneer wall lined with plasterboard, will not, and a bracket fixed into plasterboard alone will eventually let go — it is a matter of when rather than whether. We find the timber, or we put something behind the sheet to fix into, and that gets decided at the measure rather than on installation day.
Brisbane’s heat problem is the afternoon rather than the morning, which is an argument we make at length on the Brisbane blinds page. Its darkness problem is the house.
The detail that matters
Overlap, Pelmet And Track Are What Darken A Room
Light comes in around a blockout blind rather than through it. That is the single most common complaint we hear about blinds bought elsewhere — the fabric is genuinely opaque, and the room is still bright at dawn. Three details settle it, and the fabric is not one of them.
A blind fitted inside the opening hides most of its own light gap, which is why every supplier offers it first. Plenty of Brisbane timber windows cannot take one. A double bracket for a dual roller projects 115 to 122mm on its own before you allow for the fabric, and an architrave sitting flush against the sash gives you nothing like that. We measure the reveal at the start and tell you which fit you are actually getting.
A face-fitted blind that stops at the architrave leaves a bright outline on all four sides. We measure past the opening — wider at the sides, higher above the head, and down past the sill wherever the window allows it. It adds a little fabric and no labour, and it removes most of the leak before a single accessory is quoted.
Aluminium channels either side hold the fabric edge inside a track, so nothing escapes down the sides. A pelmet caps the light that spills over the top of the roll on a face fit. In a bedroom or a nursery we would specify one or both every time, and we would rather say so before you order than after you have lived with it.
Brisbane clients
Judged On The Second Visit
Any blind looks right the week it goes up. What matters here is whether it still runs after a decade of Brisbane humidity and hard afternoon sun, and whether the people who supplied it are still around to fix it.
Hi Debbie, Once again, Helen and I would like to thank you for the supply and fitting of Blockout and Sunscreen blinds to all windows in our new unit. We sincerely appreciate your attention to the quality of all fittings…
Wal & Helen Edgar
Tailor made service of super high quality materials. Always attentive to detail, and have a huge amount of knowledge of blind and curtain options which would best suit the surroundings. It’s easy to tell that these guys have…
Nick Dargan
Very impressed with Lusso Fashion for Windows great service, very efficient and the blinds look fantastic
Michelle Ninness
Where they go
What We Would Actually Specify
A blockout roller in side tracks, fitted inside the reveal where the window allows it and face-fitted with generous overlap where it does not. This is the room that justifies the upgrade and the one people regret trimming.
QuoteBlockout, and cordless or motorised without exception. Corded blinds are a genuine strangulation hazard for small children, and we will not quote a corded blind for a child’s room.
QuoteA dual roller pairing a sunscreen with a blockout on the one bracket: glare control and a view through the day, full dark for the projector at night.
QuoteHere is where we will talk you out of something. A blockout blind stops light, and it only stops heat once that heat is already through the glass. On a hard west wall the honest fix is external — outdoor blinds or an awning — with the blockout inside doing the job it is good at.
QuoteWide openings and stacker doors. A single roller runs to about three metres, and wider on some fabrics; past that we split the opening or move you to panel glides so the stack lands somewhere sensible.
QuoteHow it works
Three steps, quote in 48 hours
We come to you anywhere in Brisbane, north or south of the river. Detailed quote within 24 to 48 hours, valid for 30 days — no deposit to get a price.
We need the dimensions and the aspect of the room before we can quote, and on a Brisbane timber house we need to see what the brackets are going into.
Itemised component by component, with the lead time on it, and valid for 30 days.
Nothing starts until you are comfortable with the selections. We warrant our installation workmanship for 12 months.
Where we work
New Farm To Camp Hill
Every Brisbane suburb, north and south of the river, and the whole corridor from Byron Bay to Brisbane either side of it. If you’re on that stretch, we’ll come to you.
Before you ask
We will not put a price on a web page, and it is worth being suspicious of anyone who does. The cost of a blockout blind moves with the width, the fabric, whether it runs in side tracks and how many go in at once, and none of that is knowable until someone has stood in the room. What we will commit to is the process: a free measure, then an itemised quote back within 24 to 48 hours that prices each component separately and holds for 30 days. Fifty per cent on accepting the quote, the balance on the day of installation.
Two to three weeks from check-measure to installation for blockout rollers and verticals, and three to four weeks for blockout romans and panel glides. Motorised blinds can add about a week, more if power has to be run to the opening. The lead time goes on your quote rather than turning up after the deposit, and it is a good-faith estimate rather than a guarantee.
The fabric does. The installation decides whether the room does. A blockout blind fitted flat to the wall with no overlap will leave a bright outline on all four sides no matter how opaque the fabric is, which is why almost every complaint about blockout blinds is really a complaint about a measure. Side tracks down the edges and a pelmet or a reveal fit at the top are what turn a dark blind into a dark room.
A little, and less than you would hope on a west-facing window. An internal blind stops the light after the sun has already come through the glass, so the heat is in the room before the fabric gets a say. The Australian Government’s guidance on shading puts it plainly: effective shading can block up to 90 per cent of that heat, and east- and west-facing openings are the hardest to control because the sun arrives low and sideways. If the west wall is the problem, the answer is external shading with a blockout blind inside for the dark, not a blockout blind on its own.
Yes, and it is most of what we do in the older suburbs. Without a usable reveal the blind is face-fitted onto the wall or the architrave, and the job becomes about overlap: wider than the opening at the sides, higher above the head, and past the sill at the bottom where the window allows it. Add a pelmet to cap the roll and side tracks to close the edges and a face fit will out-perform a badly measured recess fit every time.
Only if they are cordless or motorised, and that is the only way we will quote one. Loose cords and chains are a strangulation hazard for small children, and corded internal window coverings carry a mandatory safety standard in Australia for exactly that reason. In a nursery we specify a cordless or motorised blockout blind and we do not offer the corded alternative as a cheaper option.
All of it, and the corridor from Byron Bay to Brisbane either side of it. We work regularly through New Farm, Ascot, Hamilton, Bulimba, Paddington, Toowong, Chelmer, Clayfield, West End and Camp Hill, and we take larger jobs nationwide. The office is open Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 4:00pm, and we bring the fabric range to the room it is going in rather than asking you to picture it somewhere else.
Get in touch
Free measure & quote, Brisbane wide
Tell us which rooms and we'll come to you with the fabric range, measure properly, and tell you honestly which windows need side tracks and which don't.
