Thinking of Cleaning Blinds in a Washing Machine?

Drop the blinds and step away from the washing machine.

Here at DotcomBlinds, we field all sorts of questions from our customers, from every day queries about measurements to more in depth questions about the size and specifications of our window shades.

But one question we get asked a lot is “How can I clean my blinds” we get asked this question so much, we made a blog post about how to clean your window shades here. Even after this blog looking at how to clean your window blinds, we still get the odd question here and there from customers looking for advice on cleaning their blinds.

One cleaning question we still get asked quite frequently is “Can I wash my blinds in the washing machine?” so we’ll answer that question in our blog post today.

Can I clean my blinds in the washing machine?

Put simply… no, please don’t! Fabric blinds and curtains are not designed to cope with the wear and tear that comes with machine washing, while it seems like a timesaving lifehack to chuck them in a spin cycle, you’ll find that they’ll end up damaged and worn out.

For blinds and curtains made from fabric materials, the combination of heat, water and rapid spinning will damage the fabric of your blind or curtain in a number of ways:

-The rapid spinning of the washing machine will stretch the fibres of the fabric, loosening the weave of the fabric, which can cause the blind to hang unevenly and even interfere with it’s operation.

-The heat and water in the washing machine can cause the colour to fade from the fabric of your blind, leaving you with a clean, but colourless looking piece of fabric.

-As the blind’s fabric spins around in the machine, small pieces of the fabric can get caught and pulled against the washing drum or other fabrics, which will cause the fabric to bobble and look unseemly.

-Some blinds, like Roman Blinds have strings inside the fabric to operate the blinds, during a wash cycle, these interior strings could tangle or be moved out of place, making the blind unusable.

-High heat from a washing machine can cause the fabric of the blind to shrink, which will make the fabric entirely useless to you, as it will no longer fit on it’s headrail or even cover your window.

-The worst case scenario possible, is that friction from the washing drum, or caught fibres may cause the fabric of your blind to rip and tear, again making the fabric entirely unusable as a window shade.

So, there are plenty of reasons to NOT put your blinds in the washing machine to clean them, in fact trying to avoid cleaning your blinds by hand could completely destroy your window blind, leaving you out of pocket as you need to shell out to replace it.

Lesson learned, we don’t put window blinds in the washing machine, unless we fancy spending a few hundred pounds on replacing them…

So how can I clean my blinds?

The best way to clean your blinds will always be cleaning them gently by hand, each type of blind we sell will have it’s own needs for cleaning, so why don’t you check out our blog post “Learn How To Clean Your Dirty Window Blinds” so that you can… erm… learn how to clean your dirty window blinds!

Any other questions about cleaning?

If you’ve read this blog all the way through and had a browse of our blinds cleaning guide and still have some questions about cleaning your blinds, our friendly customer service team are more than happy to answer them for you.

You can call our customer service team on 0800 1422 417, chat to us on the website with our webchat function, or shoot us an email to [email protected] and one of our blinds experts will help you out.