Made-to-Measure Roller Blinds

Fabric types — the decision that actually matters

Blockout stops light completely — right for a guest-cottage bedroom, a nursery, or any room that needs proper dark through a valley summer. There's a genuine thermal benefit too: an insulating layer against both the heat and a cold, wet winter night.

Sunscreen mesh (3%, 5% or 10% openness) cuts glare and UV while keeping the view — the standard choice for a wine-estate living room built around a wall of vineyard-facing glass. On a west-facing elevation catching the harder side of the afternoon sun, a lower openness earns its keep. Worth knowing: sunscreen gives daytime privacy but reverses after dark, when lights on inside make the room visible from outside — worth pairing with curtains or a second roller in a bedroom.

Light-filtering / translucent fabric softens daylight and gives full privacy without a view — a middle ground for a bathroom or a street-facing guest suite.

Options worth knowing about

• Double roller (day/night combo): blockout and sunscreen sharing one bracket — the practical answer for a bedroom that still wants its view during the day
• Chain, spring-assist or motorised control (chain systems get a wall-anchored tensioner as standard, for child safety)
• Cassette or pelmet valances to hide the tube, fascia colour-matched to your window frames
• Wide spans: a single blind runs to roughly 3m of fabric; beyond that we either split it with a central join or motorise linked blinds so the join disappears into the operation, not the view

Where rollers win, and where they don't

They're the right call for a new wine-estate glass wall, a guest-cottage conversion, or anywhere you want an easy-clean fabric at a budget-to-premium price. On a genuinely wide unbroken span the join line becomes visible, and on the village's deep-set heritage sash a timber venetian usually reads more at home — we'll say so plainly at the measure rather than sell the wrong product for the window.

Fitting rollers across Franschhoek

Sunscreen rollers hold a mountain or vineyard view on the newer glass additions common behind old frontages here and further out in Simondium and Groot Drakenstein's smallholding cottages, go blockout for guest-suite bedrooms across the valley, and pair well with a golf or wine-estate wall of glass in nearby Paarl. In the village itself and in Stellenbosch's heritage core, rollers are usually the answer for a rear extension, once the street-facing rooms have kept their timber venetians.

What a roller costs, as a guide

Per square metre, installed, and a guide rather than a quote. Chain-driven or spring-assisted, and whichever fabric you settle on, a roller costs R1,000 to R1,600 the square metre. Plain blockout in a stock colour sits low in that band; a tight-weave sunscreen, an extra-wide fabric or one window carrying two cloths on a twin bracket sits high in it.

Motorised, the figure becomes R2,500 – R3,800 a square metre, covering the tube motor, the remote or wall control and commissioning on the day. A cottage window or a narrow sash carries a minimum charge, because the brackets, the tube and the time on the ladder barely change with the size. And these figures are orientation only: the price that binds is the one written against each opening after the free measure.