Curtain rail or roller blind: which is easier to fit yourself

Curtain rail installation: what it actually requires

A curtain rail is normally fixed to the wall above the window casing rather than to the casing itself, since window frames and their surrounding trim are rarely strong enough to hold weight reliably over years of opening and closing curtains. That means finding solid wall, not just plasterboard or a strip of decorative moulding, and marking bracket positions level with each other, which matters more than people expect over a two-metre span.

In an older Tallinn building with plastered brick or a 1930s wooden house, you are usually drilling into masonry or timber studwork behind lath and plaster, which needs a masonry bit, a spirit level, wall plugs sized to the wall, and a drill with a hammer function. In a newer flat with concrete walls the same applies, only the concrete is harder and the bit wears faster, so a proper carbide-tipped bit is worth buying rather than borrowing.

For a straightforward two-bracket rail over a standard window, allow forty-five minutes to an hour once you include marking, drilling, plugging, and checking the rail runs level before you commit to the final screw. Wider windows or a rail that has to clear a radiator below often need a third bracket in the middle, which adds another round of measuring and drilling rather than just extra minutes.

Roller blind installation: with screws or without

A roller blind fits in one of two ways: screwed brackets into the wall or window reveal, or a no-drill cassette that grips the sides of the reveal with spring-loaded pressure and pads. The screwed version is the more permanent and more reliable of the two, and is fitted much like a curtain rail bracket, only smaller and closer to the glass, which makes drilling inside a narrow reveal fiddlier with a full-size drill.

The no-drill cassette is genuinely quicker, often fifteen to twenty minutes, and suits rented flats or anyone who wants no holes in the frame. Its limitation is that it depends on the reveal being reasonably square and the plastic or timber being firm enough to grip; on a soft or slightly warped window frame, common in older housing stock, the blind can slip sideways over time or come loose when pulled too hard.

Screwed brackets inside a reveal need a smaller drill bit than a wall-mounted rail, a screwdriver, and patience, since the working space is often only a few centimetres deep and pilot holes have to be marked precisely so the bracket sits parallel with the window. Budget half an hour for one window if the reveal is uPVC or timber and you are drilling for the first time in that material.

Common mistakes people make fitting these themselves

Most problems come from skipping the measuring step under the assumption that a bracket or two will look fine by eye. Over a metre or more of rail, a few millimetres of difference between bracket heights becomes a visibly sloping line, and it is much harder to correct after the plugs are in than before the first hole is drilled.

The second common mistake is choosing the wrong plug for the wall. A plastic plug sized for plasterboard will not hold in solid concrete, and a plug meant for masonry will spin uselessly in a hollow partition wall, so it helps to know what is behind the surface before buying fixings rather than after the drill hits something unexpected.

• Marking both bracket points without checking they are level with a spirit level, not just by eye
• Using the wrong wall plug for concrete, plasterboard, or old lath-and-plaster construction
• Drilling into a window casing that is not solid enough to bear the rail's weight over time
• Forcing a no-drill cassette onto a reveal that is not quite square, so it slips within weeks
• Not checking for cables or pipework before drilling into a wall near a socket or radiator pipe

When it is worth calling in help

A single rail over a standard window in solid wall is a fair job to do yourself if you already own a decent drill and a spirit level, and are comfortable using both. Where it gets harder is concrete ceilings for a ceiling-mounted track, reveals in older timber frames that have shifted out of square over the decades, or several windows in one visit where a slightly crooked bracket on each one adds up to a room that looks uneven.

We fit curtain rails from 35 € per job, which for most people is close to what a bracket set, the right drill bit, and a wasted Saturday morning would otherwise cost, without the risk of a hole in the wrong place. If you are putting up shelving or mirrors at the same time, that is charged as hourly work from 39 € per hour, since the fixings and wall types vary too much for a fixed price to be honest.

If in doubt about what is behind a wall before you drill, it is worth stopping rather than guessing, particularly near sockets, switches, or anywhere a pipe might run close to the surface.