MOTORISATION
Motorised Blinds Without Chasing the Walls: Louvolite One Touch
Galaxy Blinds · 21 September 2026 · 7 min read
You can motorise blinds in a finished room without an electrician, a cable or a single chased channel. A rechargeable battery motor lives inside the blind’s own tube, so the only work involved is fitting the blind. That is the whole argument for battery motorisation, and it is the reason most of the motorised blinds we fit into existing homes use it rather than mains power.
Key takeaways
- A rechargeable battery motor needs no mains wiring, so a finished, tiled or plastered room can be motorised without damage.
- Louvolite One Touch covers both battery and mains powered motors, and one remote can drive a single blind or a whole group.
- The One Touch remote shows the blind's position and its battery charge level, which sounds minor until a blind stops moving and you have no idea why.
- The app schedules blinds by time, and the motors work with Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Siri.
- Battery is the right answer for a finished room. If your walls are still open, mains is still better, and that is a different post.
What problem does battery motorisation actually solve?
It solves the timing problem. Motorising a blind properly means running power to the blind position, and the cheap moment to do that is while the walls are bare. Almost nobody decides they want motorised blinds at that moment. They decide two years later, when the room is finished, the wall is tiled and the idea of chasing a channel above the window is unthinkable.
A rechargeable battery motor removes that decision entirely. The motor sits inside the blind tube, the blind goes up on its brackets like any other blind, and there is no cable, no electrician and no plaster repair. As Louvolite puts it, the rechargeable solutions “remove the need for mains wiring, making these motorised blinds easy to install without disruption to your interior decor”. In practice that is the difference between a half day job and a fortnight of mess.
What is Louvolite One Touch?
One Touch is Louvolite’s motorisation system, covering the motors, the remotes and the app together. Louvolite is a UK manufacturer of blind fabrics and components, and the One Touch range includes both battery and mains powered motors that can run a single blind or several at once.
The part worth knowing about is the remote. It gives visual feedback showing the blind’s position and the battery charge level, which is not a gimmick. The commonest support call on any battery motorised blind is “it has stopped working”, and the commonest cause is a flat battery. A remote that tells you the charge level turns a call-out into a charging cable.
Galaxy Blinds fits Louvolite One Touch alongside Somfy, with a five year warranty, from our Germiston workshop. The full range sits on our motorised blinds page.
Battery or mains: which should you specify?
Specify mains if the walls are open, battery if they are not. That is genuinely the whole rule, and it is decided by your building stage rather than your budget.
| Rechargeable battery | Mains powered | |
|---|---|---|
| Suits | Finished rooms, retrofits, rentals, anything already tiled | New builds and renovations with open walls |
| Installation | Fit the blind, that is it | Needs a power point at the blind position |
| Ongoing | Recharging, periodically | Nothing |
| During load shedding | Keeps working, it is not on the grid | Holds position but will not move |
| Best for very large blinds | Less suited, weight drains a battery faster | Yes, no power ceiling |
That load shedding row is worth a second look. A battery motorised blind is one of the few things in a South African house that carries on working exactly as normal when the power is out, because it was never drawing from the grid in the first place. It is a small thing and customers mention it constantly.
Which blinds can take a One Touch motor?
Rollers are the natural fit, because a roller is a single tube and the motor lives inside it. Vision day and night blinds motorise well for the same reason, and the effect is better than on a plain roller, because the striped bands slide past each other and a motor lets you land on an exact position rather than nudging a chain.
Weight and size are the real limits rather than the blind type. A very wide or very long blind asks more of a motor, and a battery motor doing heavy work needs charging more often. If you are motorising a big span, say so at quote stage and we will specify for the weight rather than for the ideal case. The roller range and the day and night range carry the size limits.
Can you motorise the blinds you already own?
Usually not, and it is better to hear that now than after paying someone to try. A motor has to match the tube diameter, the bracket type and the finished weight of the blind, and most blinds that were built for a chain were not built to carry a motor. Where a retrofit is possible it is normally on a recent, good quality roller with a standard tube.
What is genuinely worth doing is replacing the blind and keeping the brackets in mind, because a new motorised roller in an existing reveal is a straightforward job. Be wary of anyone who quotes to motorise your existing blinds without coming to look at them.
What does the app add over the remote?
Scheduling, and that is the feature that changes behaviour. The Louvolite app lets you create schedules for the blinds, so the west facing rooms close themselves in the afternoon whether or not anyone remembers. A remote is convenience. A schedule is the blind doing its job without you.
The motors also work with Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Siri, so the blinds join whatever the house already runs. Same caveat as always: voice is the feature people ask about and use least, because saying six commands is slower than one schedule.
If you are building rather than retrofitting, the calculation is different and mains power is usually the better answer. We cover that, and what to decide before the plaster goes on, in our guide to Somfy motorised blinds in South Africa.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Frequently asked questions
How often does a battery blind motor need charging?
It depends on the weight of the blind and how often it moves, so a small bedroom roller and a large lounge blind on a schedule are not comparable. Ask your installer for the figure for the specific blind being quoted rather than accepting a general number, and check whether the remote shows the charge level, because the One Touch remote does.
Do motorised blinds work during load shedding?
Battery motorised blinds do, because they never draw from the mains. A mains powered motor holds its position but will not move until the power returns, so a closed blind stays closed and an open one stays open.
Is Louvolite One Touch compatible with Alexa and Google Home?
Yes. Louvolite lists Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Siri support for the One Touch range, alongside app control and the smart remote.
Can one remote control several blinds?
Yes. One Touch motors can be operated singly or in groups, which is the sensible setup across an open plan wall where nobody is going to adjust six blinds one at a time.
Does the motor need servicing?
A motor is not a serviceable item in the way a channelled outdoor blind is. The maintenance is charging the battery and keeping the brackets true, and anything beyond that is a warranty matter. The motors we fit carry a five year warranty and our own teams do the installations, so the company that fitted it is the company that comes back to it.
THE GALAXY STANDARD
Motorise the room you already have
If you have been putting motorised blinds off because you assumed it meant breaking open a finished wall, it does not. A rechargeable motor turns it into a normal blind fitting. Tell us which rooms and how big the windows are and we will tell you honestly whether battery suits them or whether that particular blind wants mains.
Request a free measure and quote, or send a photo of the window with the room as it is now.