Service area

Blinds in Beachfront & Harbour side

Salt-spray territory — sealed cassettes and stainless componentry earn their keep.

We measure, make and install throughout Beachfront & Harbour side: the full product range, specified for the way homes here are actually built and lit.

Most requested here

• Zip screens & outdoor blinds — zipped side channels hold the fabric tight in real wind — mesh for glare and insects, clear pvc to make winter patios usable.
• Sunscreen & blockout rollers — view-keeping mesh for the mountain and harbour outlooks; true blockout for early-light bedrooms.
• Aluminium venetians — the moisture-and-salt survivor — powder-coated slats for kitchens, bathrooms and sea-air rooms.

What the salt air actually does to a blind

Within sight of the water, salt is not weather — it is a permanent condition. It arrives on the air, settles on every horizontal surface and works its way into anything with a moving part. On a poorly chosen bracket or chain it shows first as a chalky dulling of the finish, then as roughness in the mechanism, and eventually as a blind that will not lift because the barrel has seized. Nothing about that is dramatic or sudden; it is simply what happens to the wrong hardware down here. Powder-coated aluminium sections, coastal-grade fixings and sealed cassettes are what keep it at bay, together with the least glamorous piece of advice on this site: rinse or wipe exposed hardware with fresh water now and then, especially after a run of hard onshore wind.

The two things this glass has to survive

The first is the south-easter, which comes over and around the mountain and gets funnelled straight through the harbour and beachfront strip. Anything hung outside the glass here has to be held at its edges, which is why zip channels rather than open-sided drop blinds are the default on this stretch, and why an awning on an exposed terrace is specified with a wind sensor as standard rather than as an option.

The second is light coming from two directions at once. A sea-facing window takes the sun straight from the sky and again as a bounce off the water, and that second helping is what makes an afternoon here feel brighter than the same hour a kilometre inland. Sunscreen mesh at the tighter openness ratings is the standard answer, because it stops the dazzle without deleting the harbour from the window. Bedrooms are the exception: with the light off the water and the boats and lights on it at night, blockout on a roller does a job that no mesh can.

Room by room, and the honest limits

Kitchens, sculleries and bathrooms in a house this close to the water want aluminium slats rather than fabric, because they can be wiped down and they do not mind moisture. Living rooms and any glass facing the harbour want sunscreen for the daytime and something solid for after dark. Covered patios and stoeps want a zip screen ahead of an awning wherever the position is fully exposed.

The limits are worth stating plainly. Timber does not belong in a sea-facing room here, whatever it looks like in a catalogue. An outdoor fabric near the water is a consumable and will need washing rather than ignoring. And no fabric product, however well specified, is a storm structure — the correct behaviour in a real blow is for a screen or awning to be retracted, which is exactly what a sensor is there to arrange.

Book a free measure in Beachfront & Harbour side