Child safe blinds

Most advice on this stops at "choose cordless", which is the right answer and the least useful half of it. It doesn't tell you what the law actually asks, which mechanisms genuinely count as cord free, or what to do about the six blinds already hanging in your house.

What the law actually asks of a corded blind

There are two mandatory standards, not one, and they do different jobs. The Trade Practices (Consumer Product Safety Standard — Corded Internal Window Coverings) Regulations 2010 and the Competition and Consumer (Corded Internal Window Coverings) Safety Standard 2014 together cover how a corded blind is supplied and how it is installed. Both are set out in the ACCC's blinds, curtains and window fittings mandatory standard.

On supply, a corded blind has to arrive with a warning on the retail packaging, a warning label or swing tag attached to the cord itself, and installation instructions in the box. On installation, three numbers do the work:

• 220mm. No loose cord may be able to form a loop that long or longer.
• 1,600mm. That loop rule applies anywhere below this height off the floor. Above it, the cord is out of reach and out of scope, which is also why a cleat must not be fitted below 1,600mm.
• 70N. A cord guide has to stay attached when something pulls on it with that much force. Roughly seven kilos.

Read that carefully and you'll notice the rule is about the loop, not the cord. A single cord hanging free can't close around a neck; two cords tied off together, or a continuous chain, can. That distinction is why a blind can be perfectly compliant in the showroom and non-compliant twenty minutes after it goes up.

Nothing here bans corded blinds, and I won't pretend it does. What it bans is hanging one badly. The installation half of the standard applies to whoever fits the blind, on the day they fit it.

What actually counts as cord free

Three mechanisms remove the loop rather than manage it, and they're the only three worth calling child safe.

1. Spring. Roller blinds can run on a spring inside the tube, tensioned to the exact drop the blind is made to. Pull the bottom rail down and it holds where you leave it; tug it and the spring takes it back up. That is how cordless roller blinds work, and there is nothing on either bracket to hang onto.
2. Wand. A rigid stick, hooked over a carrier or a tilt rod. You twist it to angle slats and slide it to draw the covering across. A rigid wand cannot form a loop, which is the whole point of it.
3. Motorised. A motor in the tube, run from a remote. It's specified when the blind is made rather than added to one you already own, and it's the answer for a window that's genuinely out of reach.

Now the trap, and it catches a lot of parents. A continuous chain is not cordless. The bead chain on a standard roller blind is a cord as far as the standard is concerned — it's a closed loop by design, which is exactly the shape the rule exists to prevent. When a chain-driven blind is sold as child safe, the claim being made is "supplied with a tensioner", not "there is nothing to catch on". Those are different products with the same label.

Whether a given window can take a spring mechanism depends on its width, drop and fabric weight — a question for the measure, not a web page.

Which coverings are cord free, by mechanism

Read it by the middle column. Anything with a cord or chain is a compliance job. Anything without one is out of the argument.

Two of those are cord free without anybody having to specify it. Thermalite shutters have no operating hardware at all beyond a hinge, and curtains on a runnered track have nothing to pull but the fabric. If you want the decision made for you in a toddler's room, a shutter is the covering they can hang off all day without it mattering.

A cleat is only as good as what it's screwed into

This is the part no product page covers, because it isn't a product question. The standard asks a cord guide to stay attached under a 70N pull. Seven kilos. A two-year-old leaning their weight on a chain is more than that, and so is a toddler who has decided the chain is a rope.

A cleat screwed into plasterboard alone will fail. Not might — will. It's a matter of when, and the failure mode is the cleat coming away with the chain still looped around it, which is worse than never having fitted one. A plasterboard anchor is rated for a picture frame that hangs still. It is not rated for a child pulling.

What it needs to go into is timber: the architrave, a batten, or the window reveal if it's solid. On a masonry reveal, a proper masonry plug. When we fit a blind, that fixing decision gets made on the day, at the window, and it's the reason a compliant installation isn't something you can post out in a box.

Two other things get skipped. The 1,600mm height is a minimum, not a suggestion — it puts the chain above a small child and, inconveniently, near the top of a short adult's reach. That's the trade the rule makes on purpose. And a tensioner only works when the cord is wound onto it; one left dangling is decoration with a compliance certificate.

What to do about the blinds already up

Walk the house with a tape measure and do it on your knees, because the check happens at a child's height rather than yours. Look for any cord or chain that can form a loop 220mm or longer below 1,600mm. Include the ones tucked behind a curtain, and include the ones in rooms a child isn't supposed to be in.

Then move the furniture. A cot or a bed against a window is what turns a cord into a reachable cord, and no fixing changes that as reliably as shifting the cot two metres. Same for anything climbable underneath a blind — see how a child's bedroom is best laid out for the rest of it.

Here's the limit, and it's the bit retailers tend to leave out. You cannot convert a chain-drive roller into a cordless one. The spring is tensioned to a specific drop and built into the tube when the blind is made, so going cordless means a new blind, not a new part. Anyone offering to retrofit one is either replacing it or misdescribing what they're doing.

What you can do is fit the tensioner properly, into something solid, and use it. If the blind is otherwise sound and the room isn't a child's bedroom, that is the entire job and it costs a few dollars. You don't need us for that, and I'd rather say so than sell you a house full of replacements.

Where I would replace: a nursery, or any window with a continuous chain within reach of a cot. In a child's room we quote a cordless or motorised blockout roller and we don't offer the corded version as the cheaper option, which occasionally costs us the job. As members of the Window Shading Association of Australia we work to its child-safety standards on every install, which mostly means we raise this before you do.

Frequently asked questions