Blind Installer Hourly Rate Calculator
This free calculator works out the hourly rate a self-employed blind installer should charge for their time, starting from the income you need, then builds the per-window prices clients actually pay out of the hours each job honestly holds. Clients buy fitted blinds by the window, and small tickets are where solo fitters quietly lose money: the fitting itself is forty-five minutes, but wrapped around it sit the measure visit that got the recess right, the drive across town, and the bracket that met a steel lintel nobody mentioned. Priced by the window alone, a one-window job across town pays the worst hourly rate of your week. That is why the hour comes first and the minimum call-out exists. With the honest presets below the rate lands near $73 an hour, $583 for a full day — and the work built from it: one window fitted at about forty-five minutes, $55 of labour; three windows at about two and a quarter hours, $164; a whole house of eight windows at about six hours, $438; and a one-hour minimum call-out of $73 that keeps the single small job worth driving to — with the blinds themselves always billed as materials, never inside the labour.
The pricing reality for blind installers
Blind fitting is bought per window and per job, and earned in minutes at the window and hours around it: measure, order, travel, fit, demonstrate, clear up. The window count the client sees is the visible part; the access is not — furniture to move, a stairwell window at height, fixings going into tile, steel or crumbling plaster. Two eight-window houses count identically and work hours apart, which is why the honest price is built from the hour first and expressed per window second.
The measure visit is where the job is won or lost, and it deserves to be talked about honestly. Many fitters measure free and carry the visit inside the fitting price — a workable model while orders follow measures, and a donation of your most skilled half-hour when they do not. Either way the visit is a cost of the job, never an act of nature. It is a different trade from the window cleaner’s, who returns month after month to clean the glass: the installer comes once, measures to the millimetre, and the work has to stay right for years.
The numbers below are starting presets, not a survey: a $46,000 target income, $6,500 a year of expenses — vehicle and fuel leads, with tools and ladders, liability insurance, sample books and swatches, phone, booking and admin, marketing, brackets, fixings and consumables, and training — a 25% tax estimate, four weeks of vacation, a 40-hour week and 55% billable time. With those starting numbers the calculator lands near $73 an hour. The billable share is the road talking: measure visits, the gaps between houses and quoting take their cut before a drill ever comes out of the van.
Your numbers — blind installer presets
Your recommended rate
| Income + expenses needed | $0 |
| Grossed up for tax | $0 |
| With profit margin | $0 |
| Working weeks | 0 |
| Total working hours | 0 |
| Billable hours | 0 |
Your rate is saved on this device only, so the Proposal Generator can show it when you price a project.
Costs blind installers forget to put in the rate
- The measure visit. Measuring is skilled time plus travel, and it often happens twice per job — once to measure, once to fit. Whether you charge it as a fee credited against the order or carry it inside the fitting price, it belongs in your numbers; a week of measures that convert at half is a week half-paid.
- Travel between small jobs. Route density is the profit in small-ticket work. Three one-window jobs in one street can out-earn a whole house across town, because the windows bill the same and the road bills nothing. Booking by area and day is pricing, not just diary management.
- Fixings into the unknown. Tile, steel lintels, concrete, plaster that crumbles at the drill — the slow window is invisible at measure time and eats the job’s margin at fit time. Small-ticket pricing survives on averages; a run of bad walls is absorbed by the rate, not by your evening.
- Callbacks. A cord that sticks, a mechanism that fails in its first season, a blind re-hung after decorating — warranty visits are part of the job you sold. They arrive unbilled, so the rate that sold the job has to have anticipated them.
- Sample books and swatches. The kit you sell from dates, fades and costs money to replace, and suppliers’ books are not all free. It is a small line in these presets and a real one: the samples are the shop window of a business with no shop.
How this calculator works
Start with the hours you can genuinely sell. Take 52 weeks, subtract your vacation weeks, multiply by your hours per week, then multiply by your billable percentage. With the blind installer presets — four weeks off, 40 hours a week, 55% billable — that is 1,056 billable hours a year: the fitting time clients can pay for, once measure visits, travel and quoting have taken theirs.
Next, work out what those hours must bring in. Add your desired income and your annual business expenses together — $52,500 on the presets — gross the total up for tax by dividing by one minus your tax rate — at a 25% estimate, divide by 0.75 to get $70,000 — then add your profit margin to reach $77,000 and divide by your billable hours. That final number, $73, is the rate below which the year stops adding up.
Now translate the hour into the prices clients actually buy. The window is the quoted unit, built from hours: one window at about forty-five minutes of fitting, $55 of labour; three windows at about two and a quarter hours, $164; eight windows — a typical whole house — at about six hours, $438; a full day at $583. Underneath all of it sits the minimum call-out, one hour at $73, which is what keeps the single small window worth the drive. The blinds, tracks and motors are materials, billed as their own lines at cost or with a stated mark-up. Quoted that way, the client can see what they are buying: a measured, level, working blind — and a per-window price with no hour underneath it stops looking cheaper.
Blind Installer rate questions
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