Roller Shutter Costs in the UK

Call three installers for a roller shutter price over the phone, and you’ll get three different prices or no answer at all. Evasiveness, not the case. The truthful answer relies on facts only available after a site visit.

Here is what the standard ranges look like and what moves a job from one end to the other.

The ranges

UK trade pricing is usually structured like this:

Shop fronts at £1,200- £3,000 fitted
An electric shutter for an industrial unit costs between £2,500 to £6,000 and more.
A heavy-duty loading bay shutter can cost £6,000-£12,000 or more.

Single skin curtains cost £90-£200 per square meter, and insulated curtains cost £150-£300 or more per square meter. The box, motor, guides, and controls all need to be added to that cost, as well as the installation. Fire-rated shutters add a significant cost, and they also require additional certification.

Wide gaps mean big differences. There are only a few similarities between a parade takeaway and a dock distribution centre. Both use roller shutters, but the rest of the equipment and the things they do are totally different.

What pushes the price up

Size comes first. After a certain width, the lath, gauge, barrel, and motor all have to step up, so the price doesn’t rise in a straight line.

Then it’s the site. The problems that trip people up on the quote are:

Where the box goes. If there is no depth behind the lintel, the box sits outside the building. It may need a hood or require planning consent.
Power. The opening needs a power source for electric shutters. If there isn’t one, you’re paying an electrician as well.
Access. Scaffold, cherry pickers, road closures, out-of-hours fittings or odd-hours fittings will all incur costs.
The building itself. Brickwork is obviously rectangular in plan and should present no problems for fixing. Old stonework is more irregular and will usually present more difficulties.
Security rating. The cost of an LPS 1175 tested shutter will always be more than that of an untested shutter of the same size. If your insurance company requires a certain rating, that cost can’t be avoided.

Where people overspend and underspend

The most prevalent overspend is for electric operation of a small shutter opened once in the morning and once in the evening. A manual shutter would have done the job and there would be less to go wrong.

The most prevalent underspend is going for the lightest lath to hit a price. It’s the one you replace after the first real attempt on it.

Get at least two site surveys, do not accept phone quotes. Compare them based on lath gauge, operation, security rating, and warranty, and not just the bottom line.

Is an insulated shutter worth the extra?

Depends. Mostly, it’s determined by whether or not you are heating the space behind the shutter.

A single-skin steel shutter retains very little heat. On a unit where people work all day in a heated space, and the shutter closes off a large opening, there is a lot of uninsulated wall. An insulated lath makes a real difference there, both in heating costs and in the comfort of the occupants of the unit in the morning.

If you’re installing a large door on a heated building, the Building Regulations Part L sets the limit on how much heat large doors can lose. Ask your door installer to confirm the shutter meets the current Approved Document L figure. Just because it’s an approved document L shutter doesn’t mean it meets the figures.

In unheated warehouses, you’re paying for insulation that does nothing. The same goes for openings that are secured behind an insulated door, and the shutter is only for security.

This is the part of a sales call that gets skipped. Heat losses around a shutter are through the guides, the bottom rail and the box. Curtains with poor seals and a draughty box won’t perform anywhere near its labeled performance.

It also leaks heat whenever it opens. A shutter that is only closed for four hours a day because the staff is lazy is losing most of its heat through the opening and not through the lath. A high-speed door, used as the day-to-day door, with a shutter for night security could potentially save more heat loss than any improvement to the shutter itself.

Back to the full guide: Commercial Security Shutters