How To Turn Blinds Into a Roman Shade

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I’m not a huge fan of blinds personally, the ones we had were nice, but I really love roman shades more. I love that they look great by themselves, or you can add curtains to spruce them up a bit. To me, blinds look pretty boring by themselves. Roman shades can be a little pricy, but I’ve seen others turn the blinds into roman shades before so I decided to save the money and try to make them myself.

This is where we began.

I first removed them from the brackets and laid them out onto the floor.

I started removing some of the blinds by snapping them off where the strings went through them, these snap really easily and the middle just slides out once you snap both ends off. I would remove 4 and leave 1, so every 5th blind I would leave.

Then I would cut the skinny string that held the blinds on that I removed. You want to be sure to ONLY cut the strings you don’t need, DO NOT cut the thicker strings that go vertical, the blinds won’t work if you do and could fall apart. You need to leave the small strings that hold the remaining blinds in place too. I’m honestly not even sure this step is necessary, but it will make it look cleaner on the back side.

I first laid out the blackout fabric and laid the blinds on top of it and straightened out all of the blinds making sure they are fully extended. I would flip over a blind, add double sided fabric tape to it making sure not to put the tape over the string, then flip it back over to tape the blind to the fabric. I purchased the fabric at Joann’s. This fabric is just a thick canvas like material that was a complimentary color to the fabric I picked out that will go over this to give it a blackout affect.

Once that was done, I flipped it all over and laid out the decorative fabric over it and made sure it was laid out straight. I chose a subtle white and beige floral fabric so it would look nice with the wall treatment in the dining room.

Then I folded the fabric up to the top blind, added the fabric tape to the canvas and straightened the fabric out over the tape. I worked my way down, taping at each blind.

I then flipped it back over to fold in the edges of the fabric. At this point I ran out of fabric tape, but I also purchased some fabric adhesive so I switched to using that for the back.

I trimmed the excess fabric off and then folded the sides, top and bottom over and glued it in place.

I let the glue dry for a few hours and then hung them up!

I don’t remember exactly how much I spent on both fabrics, the fabric tape and fabric adhesive, but it was a fraction of what new roller shades would have been!

What do you think? Is this a project you think you’d try? It was another fun and easy one for this dining room!

All dining room links here.

Next up, I built a table!!