I've used Blinds.com to get Bali double-cell cellular blinds a couple of times. Prices have been much lower than the local big box stores and the customer service was excellent when one of them got damaged in transit. If you mis-measure, though, I think you are out of luck unless they have changed their policies.

I think SOME miniblinds like those plastic ones - UGH! - are utterly wretched, but others aren't so bad, like wood ones in particular are not dated at all. We had wood 1" blinds in our previous house's master bedroom and even though I'm not really a blinds person they did look nice. We have a bay window 6 feet from the sidewalk in our current house and I put up 2" wood blinds, which do look very good and will look even better once we get those dadratted drapes up with them to soften the total effect! Whether 1" or 2" work better depends on your room. Our current windows are quite large and 1" blinds would have looked super busy IMO, as well as being a bit scrawny for the depth of the window casing. The casings were quite shallow in our previous house, so 1" blinds fit those windows better. The 2" ones do let in a lot of light when open, because the spaces between the slats are wider, and it's nicely possible to tilt them at just the right angle that people can't see in from the street but light still comes in. Because it was a big hassle to get at the middle window of the bay (we would be climbing over a chair and table to reach the cords) we sprung for the motorized tilt option on that one so it would ever get opened/closed at all. I am going to disagree with some other folks: extremely functional as they may be, I think the top-down blinds look a little odd from the outside - I think they're best on the sides or rear of a house, not "in your face" right in front. Maybe if you're in a very contemporary building, I don't know. If the view in from the street is only through the lower half of the window (I'm guessing typical double-hungs) and the style suits your decor and architecture, shutters that only cover the lower sash are efficient and attractive. They completely block visibility from outside and still allow generous amounts of light in through the top half of the window, so there would be no hassle with opening and closing a window treatment.

I bought a single roman shade from Select Blinds, just to try them out; so far, it's my only experience with roman shades. It's fine for what it is, but I wouldn't necessarily order from them again. The top valance thingy is literally cardboard covered in fabric (the sides are independent of the front, so there are three flaps of cardboard that just hang there -- looks okay from far away, but up close, not so great). Ours is on a full-lite back door and is frequently raised and lowered manually. If pulled too quickly, the folds go all wonky and require adjustment. I would recommend adding 6" or more to the length; they do not allow for extra at the bottom. Rookie mistake, lol. :-D Hope that helps! Edited to add: I just double checked, and the front flap isn't covered in cardboard, it's just a flap of fabric. The sides are cardboard, though, and they form a little "corner" so a little piece of cardboard is wrapped around front.

I don't have a house like this, but my father loved this style of house and owned several before he died. When he lived on the side of mountain in CO he got huge pieces of styrofoam cut to fit in the window frames. Every night he put them in and took them out in the morning because that house had amazing views and got lots of sunshine pretty much every day. I don't know if I'm really recommending this because it is a little unconventional, but it worked. From my point of view, every time DH and I move the age of the house is newer by decades and I've noticed older windows don't compare to newer windows. The drafts from old windows really affect how you perceive the comfort of the house. So whatever you do, I would think hard about saving money to splurge on new windows for at least the most used rooms in the house. Or buy a lot of styrofoam. :-) I do have one really large south-facing room in my house now that I have cellular shades on. I need them to cut the sun in the afternoon. In the summer this room really heats up, but of course it's nice in the winter. Windows are just fundamentally less airtight than walls. The other thing I can recommend is checking all of the windows to make sure they're caulked well. DH was able to improve on several of the windows in our current house when we moved in with some caulk.