Roller blinds

Blockout: for the rooms that must go dark

A blockout roller is a coated fabric that stops light rather than filtering it. It is what we fit in main bedrooms, nurseries and media rooms, and it is the fabric that makes the biggest difference to a room that faces east and gets the sun at half past five on a Boland summer morning.

There is an honest limit worth knowing before you buy: a roller blind hangs a few millimetres off the glass, so a thin halo of light always finds the edges. Where you want true darkness rather than nearly-dark, we add side channels — slim aluminium tracks down each side that the fabric runs inside — and the halo disappears. It costs more. In a main bedroom on this estate, where curtains are often left open for the view, it is usually worth it.

Sunscreen: for the rooms that must keep the vineyard view

Sunscreen is an open-weave mesh, typically 3–10% openness. Lower openness means more heat and glare stopped and less you can see through; higher openness means more view and more sun. On a living room facing the vine rows or the fairway, 5% is the number that comes up again and again: the glare goes, the view stays.

The mesh is doing thermal work as well as visual work. A pale sunscreen reflects heat back out through the glass before the room absorbs it; a dark sunscreen gives a crisper view but absorbs more of that heat itself. We show you both at the measure, in the room, at the time of day that matters to you — usually four o’clock, on this side of Paarl.

Where a roller earns its keep

• Bedrooms — blockout, ideally with side channels on the east and north elevations.
• Living rooms with a view — sunscreen, so the vineyard outlook survives the afternoon.
• Kitchens and sculleries — wipeable blockout or a light-filtering weave; the flat sheet has nowhere for cooking grease to collect.
• Wide stack doors onto the stoep — either a single wide blind on a heavier tube, or several linked on one motor so they move together.
• Double-volume glass — motorised, because nobody wants a chain hanging four metres down an entrance hall.

Two fabrics, one bracket

Where a room needs both jobs done properly, a double roller puts a sunscreen and a blockout on the same bracket: mesh down by day, blockout down at night. If you would rather have one blind doing both, look at a day-night blind, which alternates sheer and solid bands in a single fabric.

Controls and child safety

A roller runs on a side chain, a spring mechanism or a motor. Every chain we fit is tensioned and anchored to the wall as standard — not on request. In nurseries, playrooms and any low window we will steer you towards a motorised or cordless control instead, so there is nothing hanging at all.