Custom Roman Shades: What Drives the Final Price

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What does a custom roman shade cost? It is the first question anyone asks, and the three listings in front of you answer it with 35.99, 59.99 and 179.20 dollars for what is, mechanically, the same object: a panel of cloth that folds upward onto a rail.

None of those three numbers is an answer, and not because anyone is hiding anything. Custom roman window shades cannot be priced before the shop knows the window, so every one of these figures is a floor waiting for two numbers you have not typed yet. What almost nobody says out loud is that the three shops then do completely different things with those two numbers. One of them charges you nothing at all for width. Another charges 87 dollars for a single inch of it. The window you happen to own decides which of them is cheap.

Every custom roman window shade is priced in two steps, and only the first one is printed

All three merchants work the same way at the start. A listing carries a starting figure, and the total gets built afterwards, once the size is entered. Neutral Curtains prints the arithmetic in its own description, in four words: Total Price = Base Price + Add-ons. Half Price Drapes puts a price calculator on the page. Two Pages bills size, lift, lining and motorisation through the configurator. That gap between a floor and a total is the normal condition of made to measure, and it is worth reading once in full: what a made-to-measure floor price actually covers.

So far, so ordinary, and it is the same shape you meet across the category once you know how these catalogues are built. The part worth knowing is what each floor is the floor of. At Half Price Drapes, 179.20 dollars is the price of a shade 12 inches wide by 12 inches long, which is not a window, it is a cat flap. The first number on the page is the price of an object nobody orders.

In the room

Two of these listings also tell you something before you read a price at all, in their size ranges. Half Price Drapes stops at 48 inches of width. Two Pages goes to 63 inches on a manual shade. Neutral Curtains accepts 106. On a five foot window, the merchant with the highest sticker is not expensive, it is simply out of the running, and you can establish that with a tape measure in ten seconds.

The same window, three different bills

Take an ordinary bedroom window, 36 inches wide by 60 inches long, and ask each listing for the cheapest version of itself: no lining, the plain fold, an inside mount.

At Neutral Curtains, the 35.99 dollar base becomes 131.99. The width adds 50.00 dollars, the length adds 46.00, and the running counter on the page shows 96.00 of size add-ons before a single option is ticked. At Half Price Drapes, the 179.20 dollar figure becomes 265.14. Two Pages publishes rates rather than a total, and its rates are the subject of the next two sections.

Same window, same product category, and the two totals that can be read end to end sit at 131.99 and 265.14 dollars. Nothing about the shades explains that gap. The gap is in the billing rule.

What each merchant charges for the window itself

Two Pages Liz Linen Roman Shade Cordless$59.99

The listing publishes its size rates: width is charged 1.00 USD per inch from 23 to 46 in, then restarts at 157.00 USD for a 47 in shade and runs at 2.00 USD per inch up to 63 in; length is charged 0.50 USD per inch throughout.

Accepts manual: 22-63 in wide, 20-70 in long; motorised: 24-98 in wide, 24-98 in long.

Neutral Curtains Lily Linen Roman Shades & Blinds | Plain Fold$35.99

No size price exists on the listing until a size is entered: choosing 36 in of width adds 50.00 USD and 60 in of height adds 46.00 USD, for 96.00 USD of size add-ons on a 35.99 USD base.

Accepts 16-106 in wide, 14-119 in long, in eighths of an inch.

Half Price Drapes Crisp White French Linen Roman Shade$179.20

Length is billed, width is not: the listed figure covers a 12 in drop, and each extra inch of length adds 1.79 USD up to 120 in. At equal length, a 24 in, a 36 in and a 48 in wide shade cost exactly the same.

Accepts 12-48 in wide, 12-120 in long, in eighths of an inch.

Read this the way a quote is read. The width and the drop you need decide which of these rules is on your side, and no listing is on your side at every size.

Taken from the official Half Price Drapes, Neutral Curtains, Two Pages product pages on 2026-08-22 and 2026-09-12. We measure nothing ourselves, so every percentage here is the figure the brand prints.

In the room

Read it on the merchant’s page

Neutral Curtains · Lily Linen Roman Shades & Blinds | Plain Fold

Listed from $35.99

What that covers: base price of the PLAIN FOLD only, add-ons excluded

Build your size at Neutral Curtains

Affiliate link, and worth saying plainly: we may be paid a commission if you buy through it, it costs you nothing extra, and Neutral Curtains pricing is untouched. What you see here is a reading taken on 2026-09-12; check the listing itself before you order. The photo is a catalogue shot from Neutral Curtains, retrieved 2026-09-12.

One merchant gives you the width. Another charges 87 dollars for one inch of it

At Half Price Drapes, width is free. A shade 24 inches wide, one 36 inches wide and one 48 inches wide all cost 265.14 dollars at a 60 inch drop. The same is true on the neighbouring listing in the same fabric family, so this is a house rule rather than a quirk of one page. Widen the shade by two feet and the bill does not move.

Two Pages does the exact opposite, and it publishes the schedule. Width runs at 1.00 dollar per inch from 23 to 46 inches, which puts a 46 inch shade at 70.00 dollars of width. At 47 inches the schedule restarts at 157.00 and then runs at 2.00 dollars per inch. One inch of width, 87 dollars, which is more than the whole shade costs at its starting price.

Where this usually goes wrong

The habit	What it costs	Instead
Measuring the glass The window is measured pane to pane, and the curtain is ordered to that.	The finished curtain is too narrow and too short, because a curtain is sized from the rod, not from the window: the rod is wider and higher than the glass by design.	Measure the rod path you intend to fit, not the window you are covering. Decide the rod position first, then measure.

Where this usually breaks down, and the correction. No product figures are involved.

That step lands in an awkward place, because width is where the good decisions about proportion get made. An outside mount wants two to four inches of overlap on each side, and the neat answer on a wide window is usually two narrower shades instead of one broad one, so the folds stay fine and the stack stays shallow. At one of these merchants both of those choices are free up to 48 inches and impossible past it. At the other, they are free until 46 inches and then cost a sudden 87 dollars. Neither is unreasonable. They are simply incompatible, and you cannot know which one suits you until you have measured.

Read it on the merchant’s page

Half Price Drapes · Crisp White French Linen Roman Shade

Listed from $179.20

What that covers: figure shown before the size calculation; the page carries a Price Calculator (Regular Price / Final Price) that recomputes on width x length. Sold per shade.

Build your size at Half Price Drapes

Affiliate link, and worth saying plainly: we may be paid a commission if you buy through it, it costs you nothing extra, and Half Price Drapes pricing is untouched. What you see here is a reading taken on 2026-09-12; check the listing itself before you order. That picture belongs to Half Price Drapes and was taken from the catalogue on 2026-09-12.

Height is the opposite story, and it is the height you were going to add anyway

Reverse the two dimensions and the merchants swap places. Half Price Drapes charges 1.79 dollars for every inch of drop: 179.20 dollars at 12 inches, 265.14 at 60, 372.57 at 120. Two Pages charges 0.50 dollars per inch of length across its whole range. Neutral Curtains charged 46.00 for the 60 inch drop in the example above, and publishes no schedule you could check in advance.

This matters more than a rate table usually does, because of a number only one of the three prints. Neutral Curtains states that its shades stack to approximately 7 to 10 inches when fully raised. A roman shade does not retract, it accumulates, so that band of folded cloth sits across the top of the opening all day. On a 36 inch window, ten inches of stack is more than a quarter of the glass, covered by the very shade you bought to control the light.

In the room

The fix is free in design terms and costs money in billing terms. You mount the shade above the frame, so the stack lands on the wall instead of on the glass, and you order the extra drop to make up for it. Ten inches of extra length, at the rates those two merchants publish, is 17.90 dollars at Half Price Drapes and 5.00 at Two Pages. Same decision, same window, same improvement, three and a half times the price. Which is why the rate table has to be read before the mounting decision, not after it, and why measuring belongs before the shopping, not after it.

Rule of thumb

Measure every window, even the identical ones

Two windows on the same wall are rarely the same size. Measure width in three places, height in three places, and use the smallest.

Frames settle, plaster is not square, and a made-to-measure order is cut to the number you send. The three-point measurement is not caution, it is the only way to find the number that will actually fit.

Geometry and long-standing trade practice, not a brand claim. Check it with a tape measure, not with us.

Darkness is a flat fee at one merchant and a function of your window at another

Lining is the option that turns a shade into a bedroom, and it is the one place where the two pricing philosophies produce an absurd gap.

Two Pages charges a flat fee. Its privacy lining adds 15.00 dollars, its room darkening lining 20.00, and its blackout lining 25.00, whatever the size of the shade. The brand labels them with its own shading rates of 60, 75 and 100 percent. Those are its figures, not measurements of ours, and the difference between those three levels is a question of its own: what each lining level actually gives you at noon.

The cloth itself

Half Price Drapes prices lining by the window. Its option cards read 6.50, 10.00 and 24.00 dollars, and those are not the amounts that get added. On a 36 by 60 inch shade the same three linings add 22.52, 46.88 and 67.88 dollars. On a 36 by 120 inch shade they add 37.53, 78.13 and 113.13. The blackout lining advertised at 24.00 dollars costs 113.13 on a tall window, and the brand describes it as obstructing up to 95 percent of light, which is again its claim and not our measurement.

Put those two rules side by side on a patio door and the result is hard to believe: making that shade dark costs 25.00 dollars at one merchant and 113.13 at the other. If you are buying for a nursery or a north facing bedroom, the lining decision is made first and it decides the merchant, not the other way round.

What each merchant charges for the same option

	Two Pages	Neutral Curtains	Half Price Drapes
Motorised lift	$153.99 · on 1 of 3 listings	$118.00 · on 1 of 2 listings	not published
Power	Rechargeable at no published surcharge, or Solar Panel at 19.99 USD · Liz Linen Roman Shade Cordless Rechargeable (default, no surcharge published) or Solar Panel at 19.99 USD · Smart Motorized Plain Roman Shade Cordless †	not published	not published
Remote	1-Channel Remote (one shade) or 15-Channel Remote (up to 15 shades or groups); neither carries a published surcharge · on 1 of 3 listings	1-Channel Remote at 19.90 USD, described by the brand as optional but required at least once for the initial setup · on 1 of 2 listings	not published
Smart hub	not published	Wifi hub power supply at 15.99 USD · on 1 of 2 listings	not published
Lining	Unlined adds nothing; Privacy (stated 60% shading rate, 90 gsm white microfibre) adds 15.00 USD, Room Darkening (stated 75%, 140 gsm white polyester) adds 20.00 USD and Blackout (stated 100%, 150 gsm two-pass coated greyish white microfibre) adds 25.00 USD. All four are flat amounts that do not change with the size of the shade. · on 1 of 3 listings	not published	Unlined adds nothing; Lined, Lined and Interlined and Blackout Lining are printed on the option cards at 6.50, 10.00 and 24.00 USD, but the amount actually added grows with the drop: on a 36 x 60 in shade they add 22.52, 46.88 and 67.88 USD, and on a 36 x 120 in shade 37.53, 78.13 and 113.13 USD. · Crisp White French Linen Roman Shade
Fold style	not published	not published	Casual fold adds nothing; Relaxed is printed at 10.00 USD on the option card and adds 8.00 USD on a 36 x 60 in shade. · Crisp White French Linen Roman Shade
Trim border	eighteen trim borders are offered and every one of them costs 69.00 USD; 'No Need' is the free default · on 1 of 3 listings	not published	not published
Mount	not published	not published	inside mount and outside mount cost the same · Crisp White French Linen Roman Shade
Warranty	1-Year Limited Warranty free, 3-Year Limited Warranty 69.00 USD, Limited Lifetime Warranty 169.00 USD · on 1 of 3 listings	not published	not published
Other add-ons	not published	Composite Fabric 5.00 USD, a 'Guarantee your FIT!' remake option 79.00 USD, No-Drill Installation 18.99 USD · on 1 of 2 listings	not published

Same options, different tickets. Two Pages prices 6 of 10 · Neutral Curtains prices 4 of 10 · Half Price Drapes prices 3 of 10. Nothing here is added up across merchants, and an option a merchant does not price is left empty rather than filled in from the other column. † the merchant’s own page does not publish this amount consistently: we treat it as medium confidence and never quote it on its own.

Taken from the official Half Price Drapes, Neutral Curtains, Two Pages product pages on 2026-08-22 and 2026-09-12. We measure nothing ourselves, so every percentage here is the figure the brand prints.

Read it on the merchant’s page

Two Pages · Liz Linen Roman Shade Cordless

Listed from $59.99

What that covers: listed floor price, identical on all 38 colourways, no compare_at. Made-to-measure: size, lift, lining and motorisation are billed through the configurator.

Build your size at Two Pages

Affiliate link, and worth saying plainly: we may be paid a commission if you buy through it, it costs you nothing extra, and Two Pages pricing is untouched. What you see here is a reading taken on 2026-09-12; check the listing itself before you order. That picture belongs to Two Pages and was taken from the catalogue on 2026-09-12.

The lines that have nothing to do with your window

Four more options carry real money, and none of them scales with the glass.

Motorising is the largest by a distance. Two Pages charges 153.99 dollars for the motorised lift on a shade that starts at 59.99, so the motor costs more than two and a half times the thing it is fitted to. Neutral Curtains reaches almost the same place by a different route: 118.00 dollars for the motorisation, 19.90 for the one channel remote that it describes as optional while stating you need at least one for the initial setup, and 15.99 for the wifi hub power supply. Its own counter shows 153.89 dollars of add-ons on a 39.99 dollar base. What that money buys in a room, rather than on an invoice, is a separate question with a separate answer.

The motor also brings a rail with it, and the rail is the part you look at. On the Two Pages listing, motorising moves the shade onto a headrail of 2 3/4 by 2 inches that needs 4 inches of window depth, where the manual version of the same shade asks for 2 1/2. Neutral Curtains recommends 2 1/2 inches for its motorised system. On a shallow reveal that is not a budget line, it is a refusal, and it is worth checking with a ruler before anything else.

The two listings

Taken from the official Two Pages product pages on 2026-09-11 and 2026-09-12. We measure nothing ourselves, so every percentage here is the figure the brand prints.

In the room

In the room

The rest are smaller and easy to miss. Eighteen trim borders, every one of them 69.00 dollars, so the merchant is charging for the work rather than for the braid. A lifetime warranty at 169.00 dollars on a shade that starts at 59.99. And a 79.00 dollar fit guarantee offered by the brand that publishes a manufacturing tolerance of approximately 0.4 inches, which is to say an insurance policy against its own stated tolerance, priced at more than twice the shade’s own floor.

A step that pays off

Order one panel before you order six

Buy a single panel, hang it, look at it at midday and at night, then order the rest.

Colour on a lit screen is not colour on a wall, and fabric weight is impossible to judge from a photograph. One panel is the cheapest way to find out, and on a made-to-measure order it is the only way that exists.

A practical step, not a product claim. Nothing here depends on which brand you buy.

And the number with a line through it is not a discount

One habit makes all of the above harder to see. At Half Price Drapes, the struck through figure is the running total multiplied by exactly 2.5, at every size: 448.00 against 179.20, 662.85 against 265.14, 931.42 against 372.57. A discount that recalculates itself to stay at 60 percent is a display setting, not an offer.

Neutral Curtains shows the same thing from the other end. One compare at price of 79.99 dollars is applied to ten fabric collections, three of which actually sell above it, at 85.99 and twice at 99.99. A reference price that sits below the asking price is not a former price. Budget from the figure you are asked to pay, and treat the rest as decoration.

Two measurements, three rules, in that order

Measure the window first. Not the glass, the opening, and both of its numbers, because both of them are being sold to you and no two merchants sell them the same way.

Then read the three rules against those two numbers rather than against the starting prices. A wide, short window is cheapest where width is free. A narrow, tall window is cheapest where length runs at 0.50 dollars an inch. A dark bedroom is cheapest where lining is a flat fee. And a five foot span rules out the merchant whose configurator stops at 48 inches, whatever any of them costs.

The listed price tells you nothing about which of those you are. Your tape measure tells you all four.

Read it on the merchant’s page

Half Price Drapes · Crisp White French Linen Roman Shade

Listed from $179.20

What that covers: figure shown before the size calculation; the page carries a Price Calculator (Regular Price / Final Price) that recomputes on width x length. Sold per shade.

Build your size at Half Price Drapes

Affiliate link, and worth saying plainly: we may be paid a commission if you buy through it, it costs you nothing extra, and Half Price Drapes pricing is untouched. What you see here is a reading taken on 2026-09-12; check the listing itself before you order. That picture belongs to Half Price Drapes and was taken from the catalogue on 2026-09-12.

Questions people ask before ordering

How much does a custom roman shade cost?

The three listings start at 35.99, 59.99 and 179.20 dollars, and none of those is what you pay. On an ordinary 36 by 60 inch window with the cheapest options selected, the two totals that can be read in full come to 131.99 and 265.14 dollars. The range moves with the window, not with the brand.

Why does a wider shade sometimes cost the same?

Because one merchant does not bill width at all. At Half Price Drapes, 24, 36 and 48 inch shades cost the same at equal drop. Two Pages bills width at 1.00 dollar an inch up to 46 inches, then restarts at 157.00 dollars from 47 inches, and Neutral Curtains bills both edges without publishing a schedule.

Does blackout lining cost more on a tall window?

At one merchant, a great deal more. Half Price Drapes adds 67.88 dollars of blackout lining on a 36 by 60 inch shade and 113.13 on a 36 by 120 inch shade, against an option card that reads 24.00. Two Pages charges a flat 25.00 dollars for blackout lining at any size.

Is motorising a roman shade worth it?

That is a budget question with a physical constraint attached. The lift costs 153.99 dollars at Two Pages and reaches 153.89 in add-ons at Neutral Curtains once the remote and the hub power supply are counted. The constraint is depth: Two Pages requires 4 inches for the motorised version against 2 1/2 for the manual one, and Neutral Curtains recommends 2 1/2 inches. Measure the reveal before you price the motor.

Is the crossed out price a real discount?

Not on these listings. At Half Price Drapes the struck through figure is the current price times 2.5 at every size tested. At Neutral Curtains a single 79.99 dollar reference is applied across ten collections, three of which sell for more than it. Neither is a promotion that starts and ends.