Venetian Blinds — Timber & Aluminium

Timber for the sash, aluminium for the wet room

Timber — 50mm basswood slats, warm and architectural, the natural fit for a Franschhoek sash or casement window. It matters here for a reason beyond looks: an inside-mount timber venetian needs no new fixing on the facade at all, so it never enters the Heritage Western Cape permit conversation the way a change to the outside of a Section 34 gable would. Keep it out of high-steam bathrooms; a quality lacquer handles normal valley humidity without trouble.

Aluminium — 25mm slats for a crisp line, or 50mm for fewer, bolder lines. It's the moisture champion: kitchens, bathrooms and laundries where fabric and timber both eventually lose. Powder-coated finishes, including woodlook options, shrug off a wet Winelands winter without the upkeep a timber slat asks for.

Why tilt matters on a street like this

A roller is open or closed by degrees; a venetian steers light direction. Tilt up for glare-free daylight, tilt down for privacy from a guest cottage across a narrow village lane, close flat for full dark. On a west-facing Huguenot Road frontage catching the harder side of the afternoon sun, that hour-by-hour control does more work than a single fixed setting ever could.

Options worth knowing about

• 25mm slats for a fine, contemporary line; 50mm for a bolder, farmhouse-scaled look
• Woodlook aluminium finishes where you want the timber look without the steam-room limitation
• Motorised tilt on premium lines — useful on a tall sash pair that's awkward to reach by hand
• Ladder-tape support on very wide sash windows, so the slats stay true across the full span

Fitting venetians across Franschhoek

Warm timber venetians are the usual answer on a protected Huguenot Road gable in the village itself, and again on the older sash stock in nearby Paarl and the oak-lined heritage core of Stellenbosch. Aluminium does the heavier lifting in working farm kitchens around Groot Drakenstein and the smallholding cottages of Simondium, where wet rooms and working spaces outnumber heritage sash frontages.

What the two slat materials cost

Guide rates, per square metre and fitted. Aluminium slats in 25mm or 50mm come in around R1,000 to R1,500. Real timber is dearer at R1,600 to R2,600, partly for the material and partly because the weight demands a stronger headrail and better ladder tape if the blind is to keep hanging straight in a deep old reveal.

Motorised tilt lifts aluminium to R2,500 to R3,600 per square metre and timber to R3,000 to R4,500, the gap reflecting how much more mass the motor is turning. A small casement or a fanlight carries a minimum charge whichever way you go. Nothing here is a quote — the exact figure for each window is written up after the free measure, once the reveal has been checked and the slat held against your own frames.