I have recently purchased a home in Nevada through one of the local builders. As with all new builds, the homes do not come with window and blind treatments. This of course stems to reason as each new homeowner wants to be able to select the style and color of blinds to match their existing furniture and personal taste.
When I did a cost comparison between the Builder and my local Home Improvement store, there was a huge savings. What I did is had one of the representatives from the home improvement store come over to my place and measure all the windows. Before they would quote me a price, they had to measure as each window is different. Why is it different you ask? Well... When they build a new home, windows and walls can be off by a few degrees, no house is perfect within this regard. For them to come over and measure cost me $35 USD.
Next I went back to the home improvement store and had them quote me on exactly the same blinds that the builder had quoted me. Basically, except for the patio window, all my other windows I was going for faux wood 2" blinds, white and beige in different rooms within the house. The builder of course knows what windows there are and that they quoted me for a price was $500 UDS higher than what the local home improvement store quoted me. Installation was extra.... About $250 USD for my house. I did the installation myself. It was easy and anyone can do this. My recommendation however is to spend a few dollars and get a professional to measure if you are not comfortable doing this.
I then got to thinking that if this was the case, that I would check out online and see if blinds could be ordered. I came to this idea when the home improvement store said that it would take 2-3 weeks for my order to arrive, since they had to cut the blinds to the measurements.
When I went online with my measurement sheet, I checked some sites out and compared prices. To my surprise I even got a further discount of $250 than that of my local home improvement store. It makes sense since these companies deal strictly in blinds and on the internet so you are paying less since there is less business overhead than that of your local home improvement store.
Well I was extremely pleased to have saved $750 USD less than the builder would have charged me, and $250 UDS less than my local home improvement store with all the same warranties in place. The delivery time was also the same.
If you would like to see the Discount Blinds store that I highly recommend, see
Blinds Express