Custom Blinds for Toronto & Scarborough Condos: A Buying Guide

Building rules: check these before you order

Most condo corporations have something in the declaration or rules about window coverings, and it's almost always about what the building looks like from the street. The common requirement is a neutral backing — white, off-white or light grey — on anything visible through the glass. Some newer downtown Toronto buildings go further and specify the exact backing colour, and a handful in the Scarborough Town Centre and Kingston Road corridors specify that nothing may be mounted to the exterior frame.

The second thing to check is contractor access. Many buildings require a Certificate of Insurance from anyone doing work in a unit, and most require you to book the service elevator for delivery. We carry $2M liability insurance and email the COI to your property manager ahead of the install at no charge — but the elevator booking is yours to make, and in busy buildings that's the step that adds a week.

If you're renting, ask your landlord before drilling anything. Inside-mount cassettes fix into the window frame with small screws and are straightforward to remove and patch at the end of a lease, which is why they're the usual choice for rentals. Tension-fit and adhesive products exist but they sag on wide condo glass, and we don't recommend them.

Cordless and child-safe mechanisms

Health Canada's corded window covering regulations took effect in May 2022 and effectively ended the sale of blinds with accessible pull cords in Canada. That's a straightforward good thing in a condo, where the sofa and the crib often sit right under the window.

In practice you have three compliant options. A continuous-loop chain with a tensioner screwed to the wall keeps the chain taut so there's no loop a child can pull down — it's the standard for zebra blinds and rollers, it's inexpensive, and it works. A spring-operated cordless roller has no chain at all: you pull the bottom bar and it stays where you put it. And a motorised shade has no operating mechanism in the room whatsoever.

For a condo with young children, our default recommendation is cordless spring rollers in the bedrooms and either chain-with-tensioner or motorised in the living areas, depending on the height of the glass.

Motorised blinds for windows you can't reach

Motorising isn't a luxury add-on in every condo — sometimes it's the only sensible answer. Two-storey glass in a loft, a shade above a fixed radiator you can't stand in front of, or a wide living-room panel where reaching the chain means climbing over furniture are all cases where a motor pays for itself in daily use.

Rechargeable battery motors are what nearly every condo ends up with, because running power to a window in a finished unit means opening a wall. A battery tube charges by USB every 8–12 months depending on how often the shade runs, and it doesn't need any electrical work or building approval. Hardwired motors are cleaner but really only make sense during a full renovation.

Budget roughly $450–$900 per window installed for motorised, depending on width. One remote can drive several shades as a group, so a wall of glass split into three panels still operates with one button. Our motorised blinds page covers the mechanisms in more detail.

Measuring around radiators, fan-coils and balcony doors

This is where condo measuring gets specific, and it's why we measure on site rather than working from a photo.

Radiators and fan-coil units sitting under the window usually mean the shade has to stop above the unit rather than reaching the sill, or be mounted outside the recess so it hangs in front. Either is fine — the important part is deciding before the fabric is cut, because a shade that ends two inches into a heater is a shade you can't lower.

Balcony and patio doors on the same wall as fixed glass need to operate independently. The standard solution is a separate shade on the door, so opening the door doesn't drag the living-room shade with it. Fabric vertical blinds still make sense on wide sliders; a single wide roller works if the door is a swing type or you rarely use it in summer.

Shallow frame recesses are the third condo constant. Many towers have 1–2 inches of depth, which is enough for a slim cassette but not for a bulky headrail. If yours is too shallow for an inside mount, an outside mount on the drywall above the frame is the answer and it looks deliberate when the overlap is sized correctly.

Roller shades vs. zebra blinds for condo use

Two products cover the large majority of condo jobs we do. Roller shades are the simplest: one fabric, one tube, the fewest parts to fail, and the only realistic option when you need genuine blackout in a bedroom. Zebra blinds give you adjustable privacy and filtered light in a single shade, which is what you want in a living room you use all day.

The table below is the comparison we walk through at almost every condo consultation.

What a condo job costs and how long it takes

Installed pricing in a condo is the same as anywhere else we work: roughly $170–$300 per window for roller shades, $180–$320 for zebra blinds, $220–$400 for fabric verticals on a slider, and $450–$900 for motorised. That's one price per window including fabric, hardware, custom manufacture and installation. No measure fee, no travel charge.

Timeline is where condos differ slightly. You'll get a ballpark within an hour of sending a WhatsApp photo, an in-home consultation within a couple of days, and manufacturing takes 7–15 business days. The extra step is your building's elevator booking and COI approval, which we start as soon as you approve the quote so it isn't the thing holding up install day. Most condo installs finish in a single 1–2 hour visit.