Roller Blinds

Two fabrics, two jobs

Sunscreen fabric, usually in 3%, 5% or 10% openness, cuts glare and UV while keeping False Bay and the bathing boxes visible through the weave — the lower the percentage, the more heat and glare it stops, at the cost of a little clarity in the view. Because St James faces the bay to the east, the glare problem here shows up in the morning rather than the afternoon, so a 3–5% weave on the bay-facing glass is usually the right starting point, not the wide-open 10% some inland suburbs get away with.

Blockout fabric does the opposite job entirely: total dark for bedrooms and any room that needs no light at all, plus a genuine insulating layer against the swing between a warm coastal afternoon and a cold, damp Cape evening in a single-brick cottage.

Double roller, for the beach-facing bedrooms

A lot of St James bedrooms face the beach, the rail line and the coast road all at once, so a double roller — blockout for night, sunscreen for day, on one bracket — is the practical answer we fit most often here. It gets you the sea view during the day and full privacy after dark, without anyone on the platform below able to see in.

Control options

Chain control with a tensioner as standard, spring-assist for a lighter action on wider fabric runs, or fully motorised — battery motors in particular are the practical choice for a heritage cottage where nobody wants a wall chased for wiring.

• Suits both original cottage sash windows and the newer glass extensions built onto them
• Fabric range runs from entry weaves through to premium sunscreen fabrics
• Cassette or pelmet valances hide the tube, fascia colour-matched to your frames

The lower the sun sits over the water, the more a west-facing brief gets it wrong here — St James is a morning-glare suburb, not an afternoon one.

One honest limit

Very wide spans — beyond roughly 3m of unbroken fabric — need either a central join line or a second, linked blind. And on some of the older, smaller sash windows, a timber venetian suits the original joinery better than a roller ever will; your consultant will say so at the measure rather than force the wrong product onto the window.