What the safety page says, and what it does not
NSW's consumer-safety page on blinds and curtains describes the installation
test in plain terms: a loose cord cannot form a loop 220 mm or longer at or less
than 1,600 mm above floor level
, with a cleat installed at least 1,600 mm above
floor level
. But read the attribution line: the page presents these as the "two
national mandatory standards" for blind and curtain cord safety, the 2010 supply
regulations and the 2014 installation standard, the
federal rules that bind new installations in every Australian home. Nothing on
the page mentions rental properties, a NSW minimum standard, or any commencement
date. The only cord-safety law NSW points its own consumers to is federal.
What the rule-book pages say
The NSW paper trail, as at 5 July 2026
| Official page or instrument | What it shows about the cord rule |
|---|---|
| Blind and curtain safety (nsw.gov.au) | Federal rules only. Describes the 220 mm / 1,600 mm installation test, attributed to the two national mandatory standards. No rental standard, no NSW rule, no commencement date. |
| Minimum standards for rental properties (nsw.gov.au) | No mention. Lists seven standards: structural soundness, lighting, ventilation, electricity and gas, plumbing and drainage, hot and cold water, bathroom privacy. No window coverings, no cords. |
| Changes to rental laws (NSW Fair Trading) | No mention. A dated timeline of every rental-law change from 31 October 2024 to 2 March 2026: rent-increase limits, no-grounds terminations, pets, payment methods. No cord-safety entry on any date. |
| Residential Tenancies Act 2010 (consolidated, in force) | Not found. Full-text search of the current consolidated Act: no "220", "1600" or window-covering loop provision. |
| Residential Tenancies Regulation 2019 (consolidated, in force) | Not found. The only window-covering text is regulation 22: installing cleats or cord guides is a minor alteration a landlord cannot unreasonably refuse. That provision dates from 2019 and is not a minimum standard. |
| Residential Tenancies Amendment Regulation 2025 (SL 2025-139) | Could not open. The one 2025 amending instrument to the tenancy Regulation on the register, and the natural place a new rental cord standard would live if one exists. The register refused our readers on the writing date; we have not been able to read it. |
Every row fetched directly from the listed official source on 5 July 2026. The legislation register's pages are served behind bot protection; the two consolidated texts were read via a full browser session.
What this does and does not mean
Two readings fit the evidence. Either NSW has made a rental cord-safety standard inside an instrument we cannot read (SL 2025-139, the Residential Tenancies Amendment Regulation 2025, is the natural candidate) and none of the state's public-facing pages have caught up with it; or no NSW rental cord rule exists yet, and any assumption that NSW moved with Victoria is ahead of the law. We are not asserting which. What we can say, because we checked, is that nothing in the state's public rule book, as published on 5 July 2026, shows a NSW rental cord-safety obligation.
Property-management coverage often assumes the east-coast states moved together on cord safety. None that we found cites a NSW clause number, and neither do we, because we have not been able to read one. We would treat any compliance vendor's certainty about a NSW cord rule with the same caution.
What a NSW landlord can rely on today
- The federal rules bind regardless. Supply of corded coverings has been regulated since 30 December 2010 and installation since 1 January 2015 under the two federal instruments. New blinds must be installed to the 220 mm / 1,600 mm test in NSW as everywhere.
- Securing existing cords is already lawful and cheap. Regulation 22 of the NSW Regulation has, since 2019, listed cleats and cord guides as minor alterations a landlord cannot unreasonably refuse a tenant. And nothing prevents a landlord fitting them unprompted: the hardware is a few dollars a window, and the practical test on the state's own safety page is the same one Victoria now enforces.
- Securing cords now carries no downside. If a NSW rental standard exists inside the unreadable instrument, you are compliant the day it becomes visible; if none exists, you have simply met the test the federal standard already applies to every new installation. That is the calm version of this story, and it is the whole of our advice-shaped content.
We will keep checking the register for SL 2025-139 and the consolidated Regulation. The day we can read the instrument, we will publish either the clause citation or the plain finding that it contains no cord rule.
Re-checked 4 August 2026, and the finding stands. We read both NSW pages again on 4 August. The blind and curtain safety page still carries the 220 mm and 1,600 mm installation test, still attributes it to the two national mandatory standards, and contains no mention of renting, tenants, landlords or leases at all. The minimum standards for rental properties page still contains no mention of cords, blinds or window coverings. Neither page carries the “1 December 2025” wording an earlier research pass had recorded.
SL 2025-139 still cannot be read, and we now know more about why. The NSW legislation register refuses an ordinary request, which on its own says nothing. Today we also tried it in a headless browser and in a real Chrome session: both were held at a Cloudflare verification page that never cleared, over more than thirty seconds each. The AustLII mirror is blocked the same way. So the instrument remains unreadable to us, and the reason is a bot protection on the publisher’s side rather than anything about the document. Everything above is what the state’s public-facing pages say as at today; the promise in the paragraph above still stands.