My venetian blind will not tilt any more, what has broken?

Start here: does the wand spin with no resistance?

Hold the wand and turn it slowly in both directions. If it turns freely and endlessly, like stirring air, the tilt gear has stripped and the wand is no longer driving the tilt rod. If it turns a little then stops hard, something is jammed rather than worn, and forcing it is the one thing that will turn a small repair into a bigger one.

On a corded venetian, the same test applies to the tilt cords. A cord that pulls all the way down with no slat movement points at the same gearbox. A cord that will not pull at all usually means the cord has come off its pulley inside the rail.

• Wand spins endlessly: worn or stripped tilt gear, the most common fault by a wide margin.
• Wand turns then jams: something is fouling the tilt rod, stop turning.
• Wand feels loose in its clip: the hook has come out of the gear eyelet, sometimes an easy refit.

The four causes we actually find on site

A worn tilt gear tops the list, especially on wide blinds where the slats are heavy and every twist puts real load through those small plastic teeth. Second is a detached wand hook, which looks alarming but is often clipped back on in seconds. Third is a bent or disconnected tilt rod, the thin metal bar running the length of the headrail, which can twist out of the gear if the blind has been knocked or dropped.

Fourth, and easily missed, is a slat that has slipped out of its ladder cord near one end. The blind then binds against itself and the tilt refuses to complete, even though nothing inside the headrail is broken at all.

What you can safely check yourself

With the blind fully lowered, look along the bottom edge of the headrail with a torch. You are looking for the tilt rod sitting square in the gearbox, the wand hook seated in its eyelet, and no loose slat ends hanging out of the ladder cords. All of that can be inspected without removing anything.

If the wand has simply unhooked, easing it back onto the eyelet is a reasonable thing to do yourself. What we would not recommend is levering the gearbox out, or dismantling the headrail end caps. Those parts are brittle once they have had a few years of sun on them, and a cracked headrail is a much worse problem than a worn gear.

• Do: lower the blind fully first so nothing is under tension.
• Do: refit a wand that has unhooked from its eyelet.
• Do not: force a jammed wand, you will shear what is left of the teeth.
• Do not: prise off end caps or unclip the headrail from its brackets.

Can a tilt gear be replaced, or is it a new blind?

On most aluminium and wooden venetians the gear is a replaceable part, so long as the headrail profile is a standard one and the blind is otherwise sound. It is worth doing on a good quality wooden blind, where the slats represent most of the value.

Replacement makes better sense when the slats are already faded on one side, when the headrail itself is cracked, or when the blind was a ready made size trimmed to fit and has never sat quite right in the opening. In that situation you are spending money to keep a compromise, and a made to measure replacement will solve the fit problem at the same time.

Why wide blinds fail first

The tilt gear on a two metre blind carries far more slat weight than the one on a small bathroom window, and it is turned just as often. If you have several venetians of different sizes fitted at the same time and the widest one has failed first, that is not bad luck, it is simply the one under most load.

It is worth knowing before you replace like for like. On very wide openings we will often specify two blinds side by side on a single headrail run rather than one very wide blind, which halves the load through each mechanism and makes the slats easier to keep level.

Where we can help, and what it costs to find out

We fit blinds across East Kent from our Hythe High Street showroom, and we have been doing it since 2006, so we have seen most headrail types that ended up in Kent homes. Bring a photo of the headrail into the showroom, or send it with an enquiry, and we will tell you honestly whether it is a repairable mechanism or a blind that has come to the end of its life.

If it turns out replacement is the sensible route, our home visit, the measuring and the written quote are all free, and every product we supply carries its guarantee, including a lifetime product guarantee on selected shutter ranges.