Hout Bay
The moisture-and-salt survivor — powder-coated slats for kitchens, bathrooms and sea-air rooms.
A venetian blind steers light rather than just blocking it: tilt the slats up for soft daylight, down for privacy, flat for dark. Powder-coated aluminium is the wet-room and coastal survivor; 50mm basswood timber suits heritage and character interiors.
Coastal air makes aluminium the safe default near the water — Beachfront & Harbour side and Llandudno kitchens and bathrooms get powder-coated, salt-tolerant slats as standard. Constantia Nek side homes deal more with damp than salt, so the same coating still earns its keep. We fit the same spec on Scott Estate streets and across the Valley smallholdings, tilting light in kitchens, bathrooms and wet-adjacent rooms.
A venetian does something no fabric blind can: it aims the light. Tilt the slats upward and daylight bounces off the ceiling into the back of the room with no glare in anyone’s eyes; tilt them down and you keep privacy while the room stays lit; close them flat and the window shuts. That one adjustment is why venetians outlast fashions in kitchens, studies and bathrooms.
Near the water the material matters more than the mechanism. Airborne salt settles on everything within sight of the sea, and on cheap hardware it begins as a dulled finish and ends as a mechanism that will not turn. Powder-coated aluminium slats with coastal-grade componentry take that in their stride, and they can be wiped or rinsed with fresh water — the single most useful maintenance habit anyone on this side of the mountain can pick up. Steam is the other reason aluminium gets specified here: a slat that is splashed above a sink or fogged in a shower room needs to be a material that does not swell, warp or stain.
Twenty-five millimetre slats read fine and crisp and suit smaller windows, sculleries and modern frames. Fifty millimetre slats are bolder, throw a heavier shadow line and hold their own on a large study or living-room window. Fifty millimetre basswood is the warm alternative for character rooms and formal spaces where the blind is meant to be noticed — but it stays firmly out of steamy and salt-exposed rooms, which in this valley rules it out of a fair number of them.
Operation is worth deciding early. A wand tilt with a cord lift is the usual arrangement; a wand-only or motorised tilt removes the dangling cord entirely and is what we steer towards in children’s rooms. Very wide windows get split into two blinds on one headrail line, so the tilt stays even across the span instead of fighting a rod that is too long to twist.
Venetians collect dust in a way a flat fabric panel does not, and in an open valley with wind off the water that is a real chore rather than a theoretical one — a slat wipe once a season is the price of admission. They also do not black a room out completely: even closed, a little light finds the slat edges and the cord holes, so a bedroom that needs true darkness wants a blockout roller instead, or as well.
Read these as guide bands per square metre, installed. Aluminium in twenty-five or fifty millimetre slats runs about R1,000 to R1,500 per square metre with wand and cord operation, and R2,500 to R3,600 per square metre once tilt and lift are motorised. Basswood timber costs more to make and more to hang: allow R1,600 to R2,600 per square metre hand-operated, or R3,000 to R4,500 per square metre motorised.
A minimum charge applies to small openings — a cloakroom window needs the same headrail, slats, ladder tapes and fitting labour as a bigger one. The bands above are for planning; the price for your windows is worked out at the free measure and given to you in writing before anything is ordered.
Hout Bay Blinds