Moving House: Should You Take Your Blinds or Leave Them?

Sunday, September 27, 2026 — Wholesale Blind Factory

Leave them. In almost every move, window coverings should stay with the house — legally they're usually treated as fixtures once they're mounted, practically they were measured for those exact windows and won't fit the next ones, and financially they show better on a listing than they'll ever perform in a new home. The real decision isn't take-or-leave; it's what to negotiate, what few things are genuinely worth unclipping, and how to cover the new place without living behind bare glass for a month. Here's the whole moving playbook.

Why 'take them' almost never pays

Custom means those windows. A made-to-measure blind is cut to its opening within millimetres — that's the whole point of custom over big-box. The odds that your new home's windows match your old one's, opening for opening, are effectively zero. An inside-mount blind an inch too narrow isn't a blind, it's a draft with hardware.
They're probably fixtures anyway. In a standard real-estate deal, anything screwed to the house — brackets, headrails, mounted shades — is presumed included in the sale unless the listing excludes it. Unscrewing the california shutters after an offer is how sellers end up in completion-day disputes. If you want to keep something, exclude it in writing before you list.
The damage math is against you. Removal leaves brackets' holes to fill and paint on every window, plus the risk of bent headrails and cracked vanes in the truck — for a product that then needs re-engineering to fit anywhere. Movers charge for the packing; you pay twice for a worse outcome.
They sell the house. Dressed windows photograph better, show better, and quietly answer a buyer's mental checklist item ('what will window coverings cost me?'). Fresh, well-fitted coverings are one of the cheapest staging assets a listing has — and one more reason buyers walking into bare-window listings lowball.

The short list of things worth taking

Drapery panels (if you have them layered over hard treatments): fabric panels aren't fixtures by nature, adapt to different windows within reason, and pack safely. The rods, though, are mounted — same fixture logic, and usually excluded only if you say so.
Motorization accessories that aren't installed in the shade: remotes and plug-in hubs travel — but note the catch below.
Spare parts and swatches: leftover vanes, wands, clips and your fabric references help the buyer maintain what stays, or help you match what you loved. (A labelled zip-lock taped inside a kitchen drawer is a classy handover.)
Genuinely freestanding items: a portable blackout panel, a tension-fit shade in a rental — anything that never met a screwdriver.

The motorization asterisk

If your shades are motorized, think of the system in two halves. The motors live inside the shades — they stay with the shades, full stop. The Somfy remotes, wall switches and smart-home hub are the portable half — but taking them strands the buyer with motorized shades they can't drive, which is the kind of thing that sours a handover (and can breach the 'all remotes and controls' line many contracts carry). The clean move: leave the controls with the house, and let us spec fresh motorization for the new place — the tech improves every year, and a new home is the natural moment to get current batteries, quieter motors and scenes set up for the actual rooms.

Seller's checklist (do this before listing)

Decide any exclusions now and put them in the listing — not after an offer exists.
Repair, don't remove: a cracked vane or a stiff tilt is a cheap fix that keeps the window dressed. We sell the hardware and parts individually and do repairs, which beats a bare window in every showing.
Clean what stays: dusted faux wood and freshly wiped rollers read as 'cared-for house' to every viewer.
Leave the manuals, remotes and spare parts in one drawer, labelled.

Buyer's (or new-home) checklist

Walk the new place on day one and triage: bedrooms and bathrooms need privacy immediately; living areas can wait a few weeks.
Bridge the gap cheaply where needed — temporary paper shades cost little and buy time for a proper measure. Don't panic-buy stock blinds that 'almost' fit; that's paying twice.
Book the professional measure early: custom manufacture takes a couple of weeks, so ordering in your first week means real coverings within the first month. Ours is a free in-home consultation, and measure and installation are included with every blind our Coquitlam factory builds.
Match products to the new home's actual rooms rather than replicating the old house: the new place's west-facing bedroom or humid ensuite may want different answers than you had before — cellular blackout where you used to have rollers, faux wood where humidity now lives.

If you're moving within the Lower Mainland

One local wrinkle worth knowing: strata buildings often have uniformity bylaws about what shows from the street — typically a white or neutral backing. Check the bylaws before ordering for a new condo or townhouse, and pick fabrics with compliant exteriors; it's a five-minute question at the consultation that saves a strata letter later.

The bottom line

Sell the house with its windows dressed; dress the new house for the windows it actually has. Take only drapery panels, spares and truly freestanding pieces — leave mounted coverings, motors and controls where they belong, in writing. Then get the new place measured early: a free in-home consultation in your first week turns 'bare windows' into 'better-fitted coverings than the old house ever had' inside a month.