The half of a motorised curtain nobody quotes properly — the motor, where its electricity comes from, and how it is actually controlled. Fabric and track choice live on our curtains and blinds guide.
Every RM figure on this page is one ClickBina already publishes elsewhere on this site, for the job that page prices, and each one is attributed in the text. Where the corpus prices nothing, this guide stays deliberately price-free and gives you the cost drivers and the quotation lines instead of an invented number. WhatsApp us your window sizes for a quote.
A motorised curtain is an ordinary curtain with a machine doing the pulling. That sounds obvious and it is worth saying, because the most common disappointment in this category comes from expecting the motor to fix something it was never going to fix. It will not make a thin fabric block light, it will not make a badly sized track run smoothly, and it will not hide a pelmet that was built too shallow. Fabric, lining, opacity, drop and track profile are chosen exactly as they would be for a hand-drawn curtain, and our curtains and blinds cost guide is where that half of the decision belongs.
What motorisation genuinely adds is reach and repeatability. Full-height living-room panels and a heavy blackout pair in a master bedroom are unpleasant to pull by hand twice a day, and high-level or hard-to-reach glazing — above a stairwell, behind a dining table, a tall sliding door onto a balcony — often simply never gets used manually. Add a schedule and the west-facing room closes itself before the afternoon sun lands on it, which in a Klang Valley condo is a real comfort and cooling-load difference rather than a gadget. That is the honest case for motorisation, and it is enough.
The rest of this page is about the parts a supply-and-install quotation tends to compress into one line: the motor, the electricity that feeds it, and the path a command takes to reach it.
Everything sold in this category is one of three things, whatever the box calls it. The distinction is not brand, it is where the motor sits and what it drives:
| Family | Where the motor sits | What it suits | What limits it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Curtain track motor | At one end of a powered track, driving a belt or cord that pulls the lead carrier | Full-height living-room panels, heavy blackout pairs, wide spans | Needs a track designed to be driven; a manual track is usually not convertible |
| Roller-blind tube motor | Inside the roller tube itself, hidden completely | Rollers, zebra and honeycomb blinds; the tidiest result | Tube diameter and blind weight; the motor is chosen with the blind, not after it |
| Retrofit clip-on / rod device | Clamped onto an existing rod or track and pulling the existing cord or carrier | Renters and anyone who cannot alter the fittings | Fussier about friction and alignment; visible; the weakest on heavy fabric |
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💬 Get Your Instant QuoteThe order above is also the order of reliability on heavy Malaysian living-room curtains. A purpose-made powered track or a tube motor is engineered around the load; a clip-on device is a compromise chosen for a good reason — usually a tenancy — and should be specified knowing it is one. If the track is being replaced anyway, motorise at the track rather than bolting a device onto an old one.
This is where most Malaysian motorisation projects run into trouble, and it happens after the order rather than before. Curtain pelmets in this market almost never have a power point in them, because nothing has ever needed one. So a mains motor means getting electricity up to the head of the window, and that is builder’s work with a permit question attached in a strata building.
There are three routes and each has a real cost:
Live mains work should be done by a competent person — an electrician registered with Suruhanjaya Tenaga (the Energy Commission) — and not by whoever is hanging the curtain. Our electrician services guide sets out what compliant pricing looks like, and if the wiring in an older unit looks tired while the point is being added, that is the moment for an electrical wiring safety inspection rather than a separate call-out later.
The control path is a separate decision from the motor, and it is the one that determines whether the system still works in three years. In broad terms there are two layers. A radio remote talks directly to the motor and needs nothing else: no network, no account, no internet. It is the most reliable layer and it should exist even on a system that is going to be app-controlled, because it is what you fall back on when the router is down.
On top of that sits network control — app, schedule, voice, and integration with the rest of the home. Some motors join Wi-Fi directly; many use a low-power radio protocol and reach the internet through a hub or bridge. Which protocol a motor speaks matters mainly for what it can be grouped with later, and that is a whole-home question rather than a curtain question: our smart home installation guide covers Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Thread and Matter, why the network is the foundation people skip, and the Malaysian no-neutral switch box problem that catches retrofits out.
Three questions to settle before ordering, in writing. Does the system work with the internet down, and how? Is a hub required, and is it in the quotation? And if you later want the curtains to respond to anything other than their own app — a scene, a voice assistant, an existing hub — is this motor able to do that, or would it mean replacing the motor? A curtain motor is a fifteen-year fitting living inside a five-year software ecosystem, so the fallback matters more than the feature list.
A curtain motor is rated for a load, and Malaysian living-room curtains are heavier than people assume: a wide span, full height to the floor, frequently a blackout lining and often a sheer on a second track. Put a motor sized for a bedroom window on that and the symptoms are predictable — it crawls, it stops short, it strains at the start of travel, or it trips its own overload protection and stops altogether. None of that is a fault; it is a specification error.
So the survey has to measure the real thing. The width of the span, the finished drop, whether it is a single draw or a centre-opening pair, the fabric weight with its lining, and whether a second sheer track shares the pelmet. Friction matters as much as weight: a bowed track, a tight bend around a bay, or carriers that were already stiff to pull by hand will defeat a correctly rated motor. If a curtain is hard to draw by hand, fix the track before motorising it — a motor makes a bad track worse, because it will keep pulling where a person would stop.
Blinds have their own version of the same rule. A tube motor is chosen with the blind, sized to the tube diameter and the fabric drop, which is why motorised roller blinds are usually bought as a motorised blind rather than motorised afterwards.
The cheapest motorised curtain in Malaysia is the one specified before the ceiling closes. During a renovation the power can be run to the pelmet while the walls and ceiling are open, the pelmet can be built deep enough to hide the motor and its cable, and the recessed track detail can be set out properly instead of improvised. None of that is expensive when it is part of the programme, and all of it is disruptive afterwards.
Two details to hand to whoever is doing the ceiling. First, pelmet depth and clear internal width — a motor and a driven track need more room than a bare rod, and a shallow pelmet is the reason a lot of motorised installations end up visible. Second, the power point position and whether the cable is concealed. Our false ceiling cost guide covers the recessed pelmet detail, and our interior design cost guide covers getting these decisions onto the drawings rather than into a variation order.
Retrofitting is entirely possible — most of the work described on this page is retrofit work — it simply costs more per window and constrains the result. If a renovation is even a possibility within a year or two, run the cable now and leave it capped. It is the cheapest thing on this page.
In a strata unit the motor is nobody’s business but yours; the cable is. Chasing a wall for a concealed point, drilling into a ceiling slab, or any work by an outside contractor in the building generally sits under the house rules and the renovation permit process — our strata renovation rules guide sets out how that approval works and what the deposit and working-hours conditions usually are. Never let anyone chase blind into a structural wall or a slab; the same caution our condo renovation cost guide applies to any concealed run applies here.
For renters the calculus is different and the honest advice is to stay reversible. A battery tube motor or a clip-on retrofit device leaves nothing behind but screw holes you would have made for a rod anyway; a chased-in power point does not, and it is an improvement to the landlord’s property that you will not be taking with you. Decide which of those you are doing before the quotation, not after it.
A motorised curtain is not finished when it moves. It is finished when its travel limits are set so the leading edge stops exactly at the closed position without pressing into the return, and exactly at the open position without the panel stacking against the motor head. Limits drift over time and after a power interruption on some systems, so ask how they are reset and get shown, on the day, rather than reading it off a forum later.
Noise is the property nobody asks about and everybody notices. A motor over a bed running on a 7 a.m. schedule is a very different proposition from the same motor in a living room. Ask to hear it before ordering if you possibly can, and ask whether the system has a slow or quiet mode. Speed is the other half of the same question — a fast motor that snaps the curtain shut reads as cheap, and most people prefer a slower, smoother travel.
At handover, get the remote pairing procedure, the limit-reset procedure, how the system behaves after a power cut, how the battery is recharged if it has one, and the warranty terms in writing — separately for the motor, the track or blind, and the workmanship. And keep the manual override: almost every decent motor can be moved by hand or has a manual release, and knowing how is what stops a dead motor becoming a closed room.
Motorisation is quoted per window, fitted, because the motor, the track or blind and the labour are inseparable in practice. These are the figures this site already publishes, all from one page so that the numbers stay consistent across the site:
| Work | Published Klang Valley figure | Source page |
|---|---|---|
| Motorised roller blind, per window installed | RM500–RM1,200 | Curtain & blinds cost |
| Motorised roller blind, entry-level brands | from RM350 per window | Curtain & blinds cost |
| Motorised curtain track (powered silent-glide ceiling track plus motor), per window | RM600–RM1,500 | Curtain & blinds cost |
| Motorisation as an upgrade on a track you are already buying | adds RM400–RM1,000 per window | Curtain & blinds cost |
| Blackout curtains with motorised track, per window | RM800–RM2,000 | Curtain & blinds cost |
| Manual track, for comparison | RM30–RM80 per window; ceiling-recessed silent glide RM80–RM200 | Curtain & blinds cost |
| New power point at the pelmet | RM120–RM250 surface; RM200–RM400 concealed | Power points & sockets |
| Motors, hubs, remotes, wall panels, battery packs as components | Not published — quoted as part of the fitted per-window price | — |
That last row is deliberate. Smart hardware turns over far too quickly for a durable component price, and a per-window fitted figure is how this market actually quotes. Our curtains and blinds guide notes that Somfy, Dooya and Yoolax are the brands commonly seen in the Klang Valley, with entry-level options starting lower — treat that as market context, not as a recommendation of any one product.
| Mistake | What goes wrong | Do this instead |
|---|---|---|
| Ordering the motor before settling the power route | A visible lead down a feature wall, or a battery nobody can reach to charge | Decide mains or battery at the survey, and price the point with it |
| Motorising a track that is already stiff to pull | The motor strains, stalls or trips; the track wears faster | Fix or replace the track first — a motor makes a bad track worse |
| Sizing the motor to the window, not to the fabric | Crawling travel, short stops and overload cut-outs on heavy blackout pairs | Measure span, drop, fabric weight, lining and any second sheer track |
| A pelmet built too shallow | The motor and its cable are visible on a finished feature window | Give the ceiling contractor the pelmet depth before it is framed |
| App-only control with no radio remote | The curtains stop working whenever the router does | Insist on a working remote as the fallback layer |
| Chasing a condo wall without a permit | Work stopped, deposit at risk, and possibly a structural element cut | Clear the route with management first — see the strata rules guide |
| Not hearing the motor before buying it | A bedroom schedule that wakes the household | Ask about noise and a quiet or slow mode before ordering |
| No handover on limits, pairing and power-cut behaviour | A small drift becomes a service call | Get all of it written down, with separate warranties for motor, track and labour |
ClickBina motorises curtains and blinds across the Klang Valley and, just as importantly, handles the part most curtain suppliers cannot: the concealed power point at the pelmet, the permit paperwork in a strata building, and the pelmet detail during a renovation. For fabric, lining and track selection start at our curtains and blinds cost guide; for keeping them clean once they are up, see curtain cleaning.
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