What we measure for out here
Six Fountains is still filling up, which means a lot of first-fit specification: homeowners furnishing a new build from scratch rather than replacing tired blinds. That's the easiest job to get right — we can plan fabric, colour and motorisation as one coherent scheme for the whole house instead of patching room by room.
- Day-night zebra blinds and double roller combos for open-plan living and dining walls — see day-night blinds.
- Cellular blinds for bedrooms wanting a genuinely warmer winter and cooler summer — see cellular / honeycomb blinds.
- Zip screens to close in a patio or braai area against wind and insects without permanent building work.
As with most security estates, exterior additions are worth checking against your estate's own guidelines before installation — we keep exterior profiles clean and neutral as standard.
Specifying a house before the furniture arrives
Doing the whole house at once is a genuine advantage, and not only for the obvious reason that the colours match. It lets us set one backing colour for every blind facing the street, so the elevation reads as deliberate; it lets us decide where a cassette is worth paying for and where a bare tube is invisible anyway; and it means the openness factor steps sensibly from room to room rather than jumping because two windows were bought eighteen months apart.
The catch is that an empty house lies to you about light. A room with bare screed and white walls throws light around and feels far brighter than the same room will once a dark floor, a rug and a wall of shelving have absorbed most of it. We allow for that at the measure rather than specifying for the room as it stands on the day, which usually means resisting the urge to over-darken a living area that will settle a good deal dimmer than it looks empty.
The openings people forget on a first fit
Three come up again and again. The first is the stairwell or landing window: high, awkward, rarely thought about while a house is being furnished, and impossible to reach with a chain once the scaffolding has gone. Deciding on a motor for that one window while the walls are still open is cheap; retrofitting is not, though a rechargeable battery motor makes it perfectly doable later.
The second is the bathroom. A light-filter fabric gives privacy day and night without the flat blackness of a blockout, and it tolerates a damp room far better than a heavy lined cloth. The third is the patio, where the question is not really shade but wind: a zip screen closes in a braai area against an evening breeze and insects without any building work, but it is a screen and not a wall, and it has a wind rating we will quote you honestly. If your estate has rules about anything fixed on the outside, check them with the estate office before that part of the order is placed — we keep the exterior profiles neutral, but the permission is yours to obtain.
Read the Wilds Light & Glass Field Guide — what the Highveld sun does to each elevation here through the year, and what we’d fit on it, with sources.