Roller blinds · Cape Winelands

A flat sheet of fabric for every vineyard-facing window

The quiet workhorse of every Winelands measure we do. It shows up in the homestead, the guest cottage and the cellar-door office — each time doing a slightly different job.

Start at the glass, not the swatch book. What a roller blind should do in a Winelands home depends on which building it hangs in and which way that window looks — a west-facing tasting-room wall and a south-facing cottage bedroom are asking two completely different questions of the same fabric tube.

One product, three buildings

The homestead usually wants sunscreen mesh on its living glass. The view over the vines is the reason the room exists, so the blind's job is to knock down glare and UV while leaving the rows visible — shade you can see through.

The guest cottage wants sleep. Blockout fabric takes a room properly dark for guests off a long flight, and the same coated fabric works as a modest thermal layer on cold Boland winter mornings. It's also the quickest product to turn around when a cottage is being readied between bookings.

The cellar-door office or study tends to land on the double roller: a blockout and a sunscreen sharing one bracket. Screen down for the working day, blockout down when the room becomes a spare bedroom over harvest weekends. Two fabrics, one clean cassette, no compromise between them.

We don't quote “roller blinds for the house.” We quote a fabric per window, because the window facing Simonsberg and the window facing the yard are not the same problem.

How rollers get specified on an estate

Openness factor, explained with a vineyard

Sunscreen mesh is graded by how much open weave it carries — commonly 3%, 5% or 10%. Stand at the glass with the blind down: at 10% the vine rows read almost as if the blind weren't there, but a hard western sun still pushes heat and glare through. At 3% the fabric works hardest against heat and UV, and the view softens toward a silhouette. On big vineyard-facing glass we most often land at 3–5% — enough weave to keep the rows and the mountain line, tight enough to tame a February afternoon.

One thing the mesh cannot do: after dark, with lamps on inside and nothing but vineyard outside, sunscreen reverses. The lit room becomes the visible side. Where night privacy matters, that's the argument for the double roller rather than sunscreen alone.

Old reveals, new spans

The region's two kinds of architecture treat rollers differently. A thick-walled Cape Dutch or Victorian cottage gives you a deep window reveal, and a roller sits beautifully inside it — the cassette tucks into the recess and the wall itself shades the fabric. In the oldest small-paned sashes, though, we'll sometimes tell you at the measure that a timber venetian honours the joinery better; a roller is not automatically the answer.

New estate builds pull the opposite way: wide, uninterrupted spans of glass that exceed what a single width of fabric can cover without a visible join. There the honest spec is a split into linked blinds — usually motorised so they travel together — with the split lines planned against the door mullions, not left to chance.

Spring, chain or motor — and when each is wrong

A spring or chain drive is perfectly good on an ordinary bedroom window; every chain we fit carries a child-safe tensioner as standard. A motor stops being a luxury on three kinds of opening: glass above a stair void nobody can reach, spans wide or heavy enough to make a chain a two-handed job, and any blind you want moving on a timer or sun sensor while the house stands empty mid-week. We'll walk the options at the measure rather than sell the biggest one.

Asked at the measure, answered here

Our west-facing living glass cooks from three o'clock. Is a roller enough?

Sometimes not on its own, and it's fairer to say so upfront. Any internal blind only catches the sun after it has already come through the pane, so on a full wall of western glass the heat is in the room before the fabric does anything about it. A low-openness sunscreen still earns its place against glare and UV, and on a moderate window it is the whole answer. Where the wall is the problem rather than the window, external shading outside the glass does the heavy lifting and the roller goes back to handling privacy and the evening. We'll tell you at the measure which of the two your room actually needs.

Do internal roller blinds need our estate's architectural sign-off?

Estate aesthetic rules are generally written for what's visible from outside — facades, exterior hardware, awnings. An internal roller rarely triggers them, but rules differ estate to estate, so check your own conduct rules; where exterior shading is involved we prepare drawings for the committee ourselves.

What does harvest-season dust do to the fabric?

Both blockout and sunscreen fabrics are smooth-coated and take a soft brush or a lightly damp wipe without fuss — no soaking, no machine washing. Dust from a dry February on a working farm sits on the surface rather than in the weave, which is part of why rollers suit farm homesteads so well.

Can the same blind be chain-driven now and motorised later?

Often, yes — many tubes accept a motor retrofit, and we'll tell you at the quote stage which option we're specifying and whether it leaves that door open. If you already know motorisation is coming, saying so upfront lets us bracket and wire for it once instead of twice.

What a roller costs out here

Guide figures, per square metre, installed. A chain-driven roller runs roughly R1,000 to R1,600 per square metre — a plain blockout at the lower end, a view-keeping sunscreen or a double bracket carrying both cloths at the upper. Motorised, budget roughly R2,500 to R3,800 per square metre, which takes in the tube motor, the control you settle on and the commissioning on fitting day.

Two riders. A small opening carries a minimum charge, because a cottage bathroom window needs the same tube, brackets and time as a homestead lounge one. And a band is not a quotation — each opening is priced individually after the free measure and set out in writing before anything is made.