Decora Brand Guidelines: The Lisburn Blind Maker Founded by the Dickson Family in 1979

A Lisburn family firm since 1979.

Decora Blind Systems is a manufacturer of window blinds, shutters and blind fabrics based in Lisburn, County Antrim, in Northern Ireland. The company says Lynda and Michael Dickson began trading as Decora in 1979. The Irish Times, reporting in June 2020, also gave 1979 as the founding year and described Decora as a company that designs, manufactures and distributes window coverings across the UK and Ireland.

The early business made products for outdoors as much as indoors. According to the timeline published by its parent group, Decora’s main products in the 1980s were Dutch canopies and folding-arm awnings, aimed at the Northern Ireland market. In 1989 it extended its reach to the Republic of Ireland. In 1993 the founders’ sons, Stuart and Russell Dickson, joined the business, and that year Decora made its debut at a trade show of the British Blind and Shutter Association, aimed at the wider UK blind market, the group says.

Its premises grew with the trade. The group says Decora moved to its present head-office site in Lisburn in 2001, opened a purpose-built facility of 30,000 sq ft for its Sunwood blinds in 2007, and in 2014 opened a wholesale hub in Birmingham so that it could deliver next day across the UK. New facilities in Birmingham, with a customer showroom and a training suite, followed in November 2020.

Decora now says it has about 266,000 sq ft of production space in England and Northern Ireland, makes more than 25,000 blinds a week and supplies a trade customer base of about 3,000. The Irish Times put the number of people employed at its Lisburn headquarters at more than 1,000 in 2020.

The trade names behind the blinds.

Decora sells mainly to the trade, through retailers and fitters, and much of its identity lives in collection names rather than in the company name. Its brand list includes The Fabric Box, a collection of roller, roof, panel and vertical blind fabrics that the group says was launched in 2009 and now runs to more than 420 fabrics across over 50 ranges; Timberlux, a handcrafted wood collection launched in 1997; and Sunwood, introduced to the trade in 2004, which the group says made wood Venetian blinds more affordable through a new style of production.

Shutters are sold under the Santa Fe name, in three ranges: Madison, a handcrafted hardwood shutter, and Nevada and Hampton, faux-wood alternatives made from PVC for rooms with high moisture, according to the group. The catalogue continues with Alumitex aluminium Venetians, Durashade PVC verticals, Skye roof blinds and Softshade duo roller blinds, and a family of contract fabrics under the Uniview, Unicolour, Unishade and Unilux names.

The hardware has names too. The Cruze vertical system, launched in 2019 according to the group, was followed by Cruze roller, pleated and cellular systems and by Cruze FITtoFRAME, a no-drill fixing for blinds in modern window frames that the company describes as patented. The group says Cruze comes in gloss white, textured white and anthracite, and gives “Essence of motion” as the idea behind its curves and edges. Stelor, a range of battery-powered blind motors, began in November 2024 as the group’s own start-up business.

How blinds, shutters and awning brands present themselves.

Blinds, shutters and awnings are sold on how a room looks once they are up, so the companies that make and sell them lean heavily on room-set photography. A typical product page shows a finished window in a kitchen, bedroom or conservatory, often in several light conditions, before it shows the mechanism. Ranges are usually grouped by blind type, such as roller, Roman, Venetian, pleated or vertical, and then again by room, feature and colour, so the menu itself becomes a kind of style guide.

Fabric is the second language of the category. Retailers publish swatches and sample cards, and many offer free samples by post so that customers can hold a fabric against their own walls and daylight. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority noted in 2017 that most made-to-measure blind and shutter sales involve a visit to the customer’s home, where an adviser brings product books and samples; online sellers instead rely on posted samples and measuring guides.

Shutters and awnings bring their own imagery. Shutter pages tend to dwell on louvres, frames and finishes in painted or natural wood, shown open, half-tilted and closed. Awning makers photograph patio canopies extended over terraces and gardens, with the fabric, frame and arm in view, and often show the same canopy retracted against the wall.

Behind the product pages, most of these companies keep a corporate side: a short history of a founder and a first workshop, a list of the brands a group owns, and notes on where things are made. Ownership in the category often runs through larger groups, so a brand page may sit inside a family of sister names that share factories, suppliers or a parent company.

A family firm inside a wider group.

Since 2018 Decora has sat within Mzuri Group, which the group says was registered that year and whose website lists Decora Blind Systems among its companies. The Irish Times reported on 9 June 2020 that the growth investor BGF had invested in Decora to fund expansion into European markets, mergers and acquisitions and product development, and noted that BGF takes only minority positions; Stuart Dickson was then chief executive. The group dates the investment to March 2020.

A run of purchases followed. The group lists Domus Lumina in Lithuania, the UK online retailer Swift Direct Blinds and the Dutch online retailer 123 Jaloezie among its 2020 acquisitions; TCMM Shutter Group, Tropical Blinds, Vako and Make My Blinds in 2021; and Gardin Lis, in Scandinavia, in 2022. The Competition and Markets Authority noted the Swift Direct Blinds deal in a September 2020 report, describing Decora as a manufacturer of made-to-measure blinds that had entered online retail through that purchase. In January 2025 the group took on Evans Textiles, now Mzuri Textiles, and announced a partnership with Illumin8, a maker of made-to-measure blinds and curtains.

Decora still describes itself as a family-owned business. Mzuri’s website lists John Davison as executive chairman and group chief executive, and Russell Dickson as a non-executive director. The group says Decora’s stands won awards at the British Blind and Shutter Association show in 2018 and at the association’s Showcase in November 2024.

For a design guide, Decora shows how a trade manufacturer builds recognisable collection and system names, from The Fabric Box to Cruze, that retailers then sell on under their own shop fronts. Compare 247 Blinds, an online seller in the same UK market, and Hunter Douglas, the international window-coverings group. For this guide we use a deep green, a honey brown, a mid grey and linen with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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