We bought ours from Home Depot and installed them ourselves, we've had them five years and they've held up well - they are even in our kids' rooms and they are not gentle children, LOL!

We’ve been happy with our Graber shades. I switched them out for blackout shades from blinds.com for our kids’ rooms and they feel a little cheaper (though I think I got one of the cheapest styles). They do the job though.

We got cheap ones from Home Depot or Lowe’s, can’t remember which. We measured our windows and ordered online and they are fine. Most of them aren’t getting moved up and down often though, for example the ones in the master bedroom I tend to keep open at the top and we just close the drapes at night. So I’m not sure how well they would hold up if they were constantly being adjusted.

The cordless Home Depot ones are totally fine, comparable to ones I ordered from Steve's.

The top part from Home Depot is a little blocky compared to Steve's but it's not that noticeable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you find some that don't break, let me know. Our first set got shorter over time until they no longer covered the window. Got warranty replacements and same thing.

How did they get shorter? From which end or overall? Which brand?

I don't know where the cord got shorter, but we pull them top down 99% of the time. Got them at Home Depot. They're Levolor, and we got a warranty replacement after the first time that ended up doing the same thing.

Manual says if they stick you can pull them out at a 45 degree angle. Tried that a million times, but no luck.

We have select blinds, levolor (from Lowe’s sale) and shade store. All work well. Maybe the levolor on sale are best quality for the price.

Shade store are good for tricky windows (like a bay) when you need the measurement guarantee and help, but otherwise not worth the significant markup.

We got our top down bottom up from The Louver Shop and have been quite happy.