Are Venetian blinds child-safe?

If you’re considering getting new blinds for a child’s room then child safety is really important, and it is also wise to consider the flipside of this too; i.e., how hard your four-year-old human wrecking ball is going to find it to muller the whole array because you failed to entertain them for a hot minute.

So, are Venetian blinds child safe? What even are Venetian blinds, actually? This blog post will talk about Venetian blind child safety and how to decide if Venetian blinds for a child’s room are a great idea, or if you might be better off just setting fire to some money and hanging a blanket over the old curtain rail instead.

What are Venetian blinds?

Venetian blinds are the type of blinds that are made out of rows of narrow horizontal slats, and they come in either an aluminium option or real wood/faux-wood. They’re called Venetian blinds because they originated in Venice, which is completely irrelevant other than explaining why they don’t have a more descriptive name like literally every other type of blind apart from Roman blinds; and I reckon you can guess now why these are so-named too.

Anyway, Venetian blinds are raised and lowered by means of ladder tapes that support the slats and are operated by pulling or releasing a dangly lift cord. You can also tilt Venetian blind slats to filter light without blocking it out entirely.

Are Venetian blinds safe for children?

If your child can’t reach your blinds or any of their workings, then the blind (and anything else that isn’t both sentient and views children as prey) is child-safe. However, we tend to take a less devil-may-care approach to child safety these days than “won’t kill ya if you don’t touch it.” This means that all Venetian blinds sold in the UK have to meet a certain child safety benchmark.

This is, as you might expect then, a little more comprehensive than “no touch, no die.” That said, if you ordered your blinds from abroad at a fraction of the cost of the lowest priced UK offerings and the safety certificate they came with basically says “lol,” then choose your adventure.

What makes Venetian blinds child safe?

To understand what makes Venetian blinds child safe, you first have to understand the potential threats they might pose. This pretty much solely comes from the hanging cord that you use to raise or lower the blind, and the risk of a child getting entangled in it and hanging or choking.

I sort of wasn’t kidding when I said that “anything is child-safe if your child can’t reach it;” and there are two ways in which Venetian blinds tick the child safety box, the first being using a wall-mounted cleat to wrap the cord up securely out of reach.

If you were expecting a more complex approach to what is after all a fairly simple solution, I’m going to suggest that your friends circle consists of more bureaucrats than it does engineers.

Anyway, the other Venetian blind child safety feature comes in the form of a breakaway tassel attached to the end of the control cords. This keeps the two ends of your blind’s controls neat, but also means that should your child stick their head in the cord’s loop and lean into it or spin themselves into a knot, the tassel will simply break and come off the end, allowing the cords to separate and freeing your child before any harm is done.

The only risk remaining then is that when the tassel releases, your child might fall if they were leaning their weight into the cord, but this is far preferable to the alternative albeit potentially a hell of a lot scream-ier.

Are Venetian blinds a good choice for a child’s room?

In terms of child safety, Venetian blinds are as safe as any other blind, as long as they’re installed and used correctly with the mentioned safety features in place.

In terms whether or not Venetian blinds and children are a good mix, I refer you back once more to the fact that this is sort of moot if you can keep the blind and all of its controls out of your child’s reach so that blind cannot harm child and neither can child harm blind; this latter being the far more likely scenario.

However, assuming your child can reach or at some point will grow to be able to reach the blind’s controls, slats, or both, the wisdom of picking Venetian blinds for a child’s room depends largely on how destructive or otherwise your child is.

Venetian blind slats and the ladder tapes that string them together are designed to look good and operate smoothly for many years, and not to be delicate or cause you to feel as if they might fall apart or jam up if you speak to them too sharply. However, they are also designed for use by adults rather than by smaller people who may think that say, giving a £30 Barbie a Mohican is a perfectly acceptable endeavour.

Bearing this in mind then, Venetian blinds are perfectly fine for older children who know to operate them with respect and not to take a lightsaber to them for shits and giggles, but they’re not such a good choice for younger children who are either heavier handed or grubbier-handed than they might look.

The best blinds for a child’s room based on lifespan and the sheer range of options available to you tend to be roller blinds. Children’s roller blinds come in a vast array of colours, patterns, and styles that you just won’t find in slatty alternatives (boy I’m glad I caught the autocorrect that Word gave me for “slatty” before this piece went live), and they’re what we recommend for children’s bedrooms or playrooms.