Saxonwold blinds: what the measure usually has to explain

It is the most expensive misreading we meet at a Saxonwold measure. Somebody stands in a green, gentle-looking lounge at eleven in the morning and concludes the canopy has it covered. Come back at half past four and the same room is lit like a stage. Dapple is direct sun with holes in it: the holes travel all day, they widen the week a limb comes out, and in June, when the sun is lowest, much of that shade lies flat on the lawn instead of standing between you and the glass. Leaf shadow softens glare, not heat.

The west. Sunset swings between a bearing of about 243 degrees in midsummer and 295 degrees in June, and the sun is low on every one of those bearings, so it arrives under the eave and lands square on the glass. Overhead projections do close to nothing here. This is the hour people describe when they get in touch, and it is almost never a north-facing room they are describing. If there is one elevation to solve properly rather than cheaply, it is this one.

Because at midday in June the sun stands about 40 degrees up and due north, pushing free warmth through the same pane that was a problem in February. Winter here is dry, with minima near freezing, and a single-glazed room under a three-metre ceiling swings hardest in both directions. A deep eave or an old stoep roof already cuts the near-vertical December sun on a north wall while letting the low June sun underneath, so blacking that wall out permanently throws the warmth away. North glass gets something adjustable, not something fixed.

First light in December arrives at 05:13 on a bearing of about 116 degrees, well south of due east, and an east window takes it low and direct while the fabric of the house is still cool. The complaint is glare and an early start, not heat. Bedrooms on this side are a blockout conversation; lounges usually are not. On a bedroom facing the sunrise a double roller carrying both a sunscreen and a blockout on one bracket is usually the honest answer, because sunscreen privacy runs backwards after dark.

A hundred years of settling leaves sashes and casements out of true, and two reveals in the same room will rarely match. Slatted blinds in particular show a crooked recess quickly. So we take the width at three heights and size the headrail or tube to the actual opening rather than a catalogue width, which is how a blind ends up sitting flush without a bright gap down one side. The depth of the reveal is measured at the same time, because it decides whether an inside mount is possible at all.

Not if the timber cannot take it or should not be touched. Oregon, meranti, steel casement and aluminium each take a screw differently, and some of the original wood in these houses is either too soft or too good to drill. In that case brackets go into sound wall or lintel, with a light outside mount covering the frame, and inside-mount brackets are sized to the real recess where it is deep enough. Which of those suits your window is decided at the measure, with a hand on the frame, before anything is ordered.

Under that much canopy many rooms are short of light rather than drowning in it, so the specification leans on blinds that manage glare without stealing daylight: tilting venetians, sheer day-night bands and sunscreen mesh, with full blockout kept for the bedrooms that need it. Cottage-scale rooms also cannot spare a fat bundle of fabric at the head of every window. Cellular blinds raise to a stack a few centimetres tall and venetians tilt instead of lifting, so the room keeps its proportions. Where a steel cottage pane leaves no depth for an inside mount, a neat outside mount covers the frame without crowding the room.

The township was proclaimed in 1925, so most original houses here are long past sixty. Section 34(1) of the National Heritage Resources Act requires a permit before any structure older than sixty years is altered, and alter is defined broadly, covering appearance as well as structure. Age alone is the trigger. A blind fitted inside the room changes neither the structure nor the way the house reads from the avenue; anything hung on the outside wall changes both. We are not heritage practitioners and will not guess the answer for your address, but we raise it at the measure and specify the interior scheme so it stands on its own if the external half never happens.

For winter, yes. The fabric folds into cells and every cell holds a pocket of still air against the pane, and in a room with one sheet of 1920s glass, a three-metre ceiling and July nights near freezing, that trapped air is the least invasive comfort you can buy: no new frames, no altered sashes, nothing about the window changed. The honest half is that it sits on the inside, which is the wrong side of the glass for summer. On a bad west window the specification is usually both, external for February and cellular for July.

When the wall is hard west or north-west with no overhang. An interior blockout kills the glare in a second, but the pane behind it has already absorbed the energy and radiates it back at you all evening. Outside the glass, an external venetian keeps a tilt and therefore a view, and a roller shutter closes solid and rolls into a smaller head box. They are the dearest answers in the collection, they want a motor, they need a plan for the storm season, and they change the outside of the house, which puts them into the heritage question. Both are shading products; neither is security-rated.

We watch where the afternoon light actually lands rather than centring the awning on the door. Many terraces here want it biased west of the doorway so the table stays shaded at four o'clock. Period brick and stone need the right anchors and load spread, so the on-site measure checks the wall, the mounting height and the fall of the awning before it is ordered. On a Houghton ridge, where gusts arrive that the valley never feels, a motor and wind sensor are the baseline rather than the upgrade.

That is the job it does. Wind-locked zip screens close the open sides of a stoep against low western sun, evening midges and winter chill without walls and without losing the garden, and the fabric is held under tension in side channels so it keeps its shape in a breeze. Paired with a folding-arm awning overhead, the stoep becomes a room for months longer than it otherwise would.

At three metres a blind nobody can reach is a blind nobody adjusts, so motorising tall sashes, gables and skylights is usually right. The catch is that the cable has to reach the window without opening an original wall, and chasing one is the last thing anyone wants. Sometimes there is a ceiling void directly above. Sometimes the answer is a battery motor and a charging habit. Either way it is a design question we settle at the measure, before the order rather than after it.

Yes. The quote comes back written and itemised per window, with lead times confirmed in it, precisely so a big house can be taken a few rooms at a time. The consultant will also tell you which windows need nothing at all, because a fair share of the afternoon shade on these plots is already being done by a mature oak or a deep stoep. Knowing where to spend nothing is worth as much as knowing where to spend properly.