Open your eyes to integral blinds
Ian Short, Managing Director at Morley Glass & Glazing, outlines integral blinds options and available styles and how his company has revolutionised the industry through innovation, customer service and reliability
Integral blinds are fast becoming the stylish finishing touch to kitchen and home extensions, refurb projects, and window and door replacements – and offer fabricators and installers a profitable route to growing their business. Ian Short, Managing Director at Morley Glass & Glazing, outlines the options and styles available and how his company has revolutionised the industry through innovation, customer service and reliability. Morley Glass & Glazing started life as a traditional sealed unit manufacturer more than 20 years ago but soon spotted the opportunity to specialise in the manufacture of integral blinds. 18 years later it is our core product with 80% of the sealed units we manufacture also containing integral blinds, which are sold under the Uni-Blind® brand name.
Suitable for domestic and commercial double-glazed windows and doors, Uni-Blind® sealed units with ScreenLine® integral blinds inside can be manual, cordless slider, slider, solar powered or motorised – providing consumers with a choice in the way they open, close and tilt the blinds.
A recent innovation is the launch of an app that enables tech-savvy homeowners to operate motorised blinds (the MB System) at the touch of a button, even when they are not at home. Plus Morley has developed a SmartMotion device that allows motorised integral blinds to be easily integrated into home automation systems. It’s all about making it as easy as possible for the consumer as well as the installer. We manufacture the blinds so that once on site they are easy to fit, often without the need for an electrician, in the case of the motorised blinds. If you can fit a window, then you can certainly fit a window with an integral blind inside. And there’s a good margin in it for installers too. Integral blinds are perceived to be a premium product, often chosen alongside bi-fold doors and large glazed areas, where they are a very practical and aesthetically pleasing solution for privacy and shade. Uni-Blinds, regardless of the chosen operating system, are all available in 10 days and come with warm edge spacer bar fitted as standard for maximum thermal efficiency. Integral blind systems are available in a wide range of colours as well as a full range of glazing options including toughened, solar control, triple glazing, thermal insulation, noise reduction and furniture fade reduction – so you can meet every need of your customer.
A new development is the availability of integral blinds inside fire-rated sealed units – ideal for fire doors, partition walls and other commercial applications. Morley Glass has teamed up with Pyroguard to offer fire-rated sealed units with integral blinds inside with fire-resistance from 30 to 120 minutes. Morley’s fire-rated Uni-Blind sealed units with ScreenLine integral blinds inside now comply with the performance criteria set out in the EU 305/2011 Construction Products Regulation, and have been independently verified by TUV UK, a UKAS accredited third party testing house. Used widely in schools, hospitals, hotels, offices and other commercial buildings, as well as multi-let residential premises, the fire-rated integral blinds can be manufactured in sealed units up to 2m2 in size.
Here at Morley Glass & Glazing we’re seeing strong demand for Uni-Blinds from fabricators and installers who want to give their customers the finishing touch to the installation. Uni-Blinds are the final piece of the jigsaw. They provide the stylish, unobtrusive and low maintenance long term privacy solution. It’s also a fantastic up-sell opportunity for installers as homeowners are often keen to complete their window and door installation with the simplicity of a single supplier.
The business also provides unrivalled technical support for Uni-Blinds® customers too, being the only UK supplier of integral blinds to have dedicated customer support engineers on the road. It also stocks the largest range of ScreenLine® system spare parts in Europe with £1 million of ScreenLine® components available within 24 hours.
