Hermanus blinds and shading questions, wall by wall

They usually do, but not for heat. At roughly 34.4 degrees south the sun spends half the year over the mountains behind the town, and a south-facing window gets almost no direct beam from March to September. What it gets is contrast: a bright southern sky and a large, moving, reflective bay throwing that brightness back at the glass. The eye adapts to the water, the room goes dim, and the room's own reflection lays itself over the view like a film. A heavier curtain solves none of that. A sunscreen roller takes the top off the brightness while leaving the picture intact.

Dark, on a view window. This is the fabric advice most people get backwards. A light-coloured mesh reflects daylight, and a good deal of it reflects back into the room, veiling the horizon you hung it for. A charcoal, bronze or deep grey mesh absorbs that light instead, so the weave disappears and the horizon stays sharp. Pale fabric wins on heat rejection; dark fabric wins on view-through. On the bay side of a Hermanus house, where the heat load is small and the view is the whole point, dark is usually the right trade, in a low-openness weave that keeps a Walker Bay horizon legible.

Not permanently. In June the midday sun stands only about 32 degrees above the horizon, due north, and comes through a north window at a shallow angle that reaches two to three metres into the room, which is free warmth in a town whose winter is damp rather than freezing. In December the same sun sits near 79 degrees and falls almost vertically, so an eave or balcony around 600 millimetres deep shades that window through the middle of a January day and does not touch it in June. Look at what your own overhang does at noon in each season before deciding. Where a newer build has no eave, external venetians tilt to admit June and refuse January.

Stopping the beam before it reaches the pane. At midsummer the sun sets on a bearing near 241 degrees, putting the last two hours of the day low over the open water at the mouth of the bay, straight into west and south-west glass at eye height, plus a second helping bounced off the sea. Once that beam has crossed the glass an interior blind can only soak up the energy and hand it back later. So the premium answer hangs outside: external venetians where the view matters, roller shutters where the room wants more, zip screens for the deck. Where none can be arranged, a tightly woven sunscreen behind the pane is the fair second choice.

It is a property of one product at one size, correctly installed into sound substrate, and three things quietly cancel it. Make the awning wider or the projection longer and the loads rise steeply. Fix it into cracked plaster, a rotten fascia or a thin fibre-cement soffit and the rating describes hardware that is no longer really attached to the building. Leave it out unattended and the rating is a laboratory number while the weather is not. That is why we insist on an automatic wind sensor on anything that projects, and why on an exposed elevation a channel-guided zip screen, which transfers load into the building along its whole height, beats an arm-supported awning holding it in two elbows.

On a cliff-facing deck the difference is not subtle. A folding-arm awning gives overhead shade with no posts and folds into a cassette, which is right for a braai area that wants shade at midday and winter sun later, provided it has a wind sensor and a full cassette on a directly exposed position. A zip screen drops vertically with its fabric edge welded into a zipper running captive in aluminium side channels, so it holds where an open-armed awning would be folding, and it turns a windy afternoon deck into a room. Clear PVC panels give a wind-and-rain-proof winter braai room without losing the view; blockout panels kill a hard west sun or make an outdoor cinema.

No, and we would rather say so at the quote than after the first winter. Salt aerosol carries inland on a blow and attacks the small metal parts that make blinds work: brackets, fasteners, chain, cassette end caps, the joints of an awning arm. Powder-coated aluminium, sealed cassettes and fixings specified for a marine atmosphere are standard here, but within sight of surf no coating makes maintenance unnecessary. An occasional rinse with fresh water from a hosepipe, not a pressure washer, does more for exterior hardware than any upgrade, especially after a hard blow. Good stainless can bloom brown; it is cosmetic and wipes off. Where a run of glass has a sheltered end, the motor goes there.

No, and the word gets used loosely in this trade, so we say it plainly. What we fit is an external shading product: rigid aluminium slats that close down over the opening on the outside of the glass, cutting heat and glare hard and adding an insulating air gap on a cold night. They are built to take both of the town's winds while they kill the glare, and they carry no security rating at all. If keeping people out is the actual requirement, that is a different product on a different quote, available on request. On a west or south-west wall, roller shutters sit with external venetians and zip screens in the external tier we lead with.

For a blind inside the reveal, no. The National Heritage Resources Act draws its line at sixty years, and crossing it means a permit from Heritage Western Cape before altering the building or any part of it; the Old Harbour precinct carries its own Provincial Heritage Site protection on top. A blind mounted inside a deep, original opening sits in shadow, touches no external fabric and alters nothing, so in legal terms it is the quiet option. A headbox, guide rail or cassette bolted to the outside face of an old wall is a different conversation, and it belongs before the order rather than after the delivery. Nothing we say is a heritage-approval opinion; that sits with the authority.

That is what recessed and concealed installations are for. On the cliff line and up on the Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge the problem inverts from the old core: sliding walls of frameless glass, nowhere to hide a blind, and an architect who does not want to see a cassette. The roller lives in a slot in the ceiling and the fabric appears out of a shadow line, so the glass line stays uninterrupted. It has to be planned while the ceiling is still open, so if you are building, this is the one decision worth making early rather than at handover. Several ridge estates also run aesthetics committees whose rules on what shows from outside can be stricter than any heritage authority.

Being inland and elevated above the wine route, the ridge takes less direct salt spray than Voelklip or the seafront, but it deals with two things the coast does not: genuine valley wind funnelling, which can shift through an afternoon on top of the prevailing pattern, and dust off vineyard activity near the working farms in harvest season. The reduced salt makes timber-look venetians a fair option indoors, unlike the open coast. The glass faces vineyard rows and mountains rather than ocean, so motorised roller and vertical blinds suit the wide walls, zip screens hold a patio against the funnelled wind, and any visible exterior fitting gets an aesthetics-committee read before it gets a wind rating.

Usually, yes, and it is the thing a phone estimate cannot weigh. Eastcliff's mature trees throw genuine dappled shade on some elevations, while a wall or braai deck facing the golf course at the back fence gets full open exposure with none of that buffering. So a room under tree cover often wants a cellular honeycomb blind, where insulation matters more than glare control, and a bedroom that wants the garden by day and privacy once the streetlights come on suits a day/night double roller. The golf-facing deck is folding-arm awning territory, with wind-sensor retract fitted as standard. The consultant reads it room by room.

Southern right whales are in Walker Bay from around June to December, peaking August to October, and this town watches them from its own front rooms. So the months a Hermanus lounge does most of its living are the cold, bright, damp ones, when the sun is on the wrong wall and the sea is grey and glaring at once. A December sunroom fails all of that. It wants see-through glazing dressing on the bay side, never a bedroom blockout; cellular honeycomb blinds wherever it runs cold, drawn over single glazing on a wet August night; and a motor, because a blind nudged twenty times a morning as the light moves otherwise stays where it was left.

Five things. How much sky and water each window actually sees, since two windows on one wall with a neighbour's roofline in front of one have different briefs. What is behind the plaster, because old brick, a cavity, later timber framing and a boarded parapet are four different fixings, and one of them means nothing external goes on that wall. How deep and square each opening is, since old buildings settle and new ones are not always true. How exposed your particular elevation is, not the town's. And power, permission and who else has a say, from the nearest usable point to an estate committee or the heritage authority.