Another day down at Canary Wharf, this time blending the old with the new in this uber contemporary cityscape.

The minimalist living areas call for light management over privacy, and clean uncluttered lines for the stunning, minimalist living space

A duplex apartment in Pan Peninsula with stunning floor to ceiling windows called for a clinical, contemporary look to compliment and augment rather than clutter the minimalist living areas.

There was a small practical issue though. Two of the vertical blind headrail systems would be over 3.4metres long, and, although we have on previous Canary Wharf projects taken hardware up the outside of the building where safe and practical to do so, we were 34 floors up on this particular occasion. So we took to the stair well and carefully threaded the headrails up 68 flights of stairs!

One of the wider vertical blinds – spanning a 3.3 metre wide set of balcony doors. The blind vanes just clear the ceiling air conditioning system whilst narrowly missing the balcony door hardware

To see a video of the above vertical blind in operation click here.

In the bedrooms, where dim out considerations and the need to enclose the space for a cosier feel come a little more to the fore, we suggested 100% linen, interlined, blackout lined curtains with an embroidered tree of life motif.

The curtains were overslung (i.e. hung in front of, rather than underneath) a ceiling fixed, corded curtain track (the CKS system from Evans Textiles), the minimal profile of this sytem making it an ideal track for ceiling fix applications with no pre-installed ceiling pockets or upstands.

100% linen curtains with embroidered tree of life motif bring a touch of softness to the bedroom

Hints and Tips:

Vertical blinds are a great option for city environments where light control or privacy is a consideration, because the blind control rods/cords enable you to tilt the vertical vanes through 90 degrees – giving you a degree of versatility in terms of angling out the light or prying eyes from any given side of the living area – that cannot be achieved with curtains, roman blinds or even venetian blinds.

If you’re worried about the verticals taking up window space when drawn back you can order a headrail that is wider than the actual window space to be covered – so that you can draw your blinds back into the space to the side of your window when they’re not in use.

For tricky corner windows, vertical blinds offer an aesthetic, practical solution:

The tilt control of vertical blinds makes them an ideal application for apartment corner windows