A flat sheet of fabric for every werf window and glass wall

A roller blind is a single fabric panel on an aluminium tube — spring, chain or motor driven, made to measure per window, with a clean minimal line that suits both a homestead's small-paned sash windows and a wine-farm home's floor-to-ceiling glass.

Choosing the fabric

Blockout stops light completely — the right call for a farmhouse bedroom, a nursery in a converted cottage, or any room that needs to go properly dark regardless of a valley moon or a neighbour's security light. It also acts as a thermal layer against both summer heat and the damp chill of a June morning.

Sunscreen mesh (3%, 5% or 10% openness) cuts glare and UV while keeping the kloof view — the standard choice for a living room or study with glass worth looking through. The lower the percentage, the more heat and glare it blocks, at the cost of a little view clarity; 3–5% is the usual balance on the wide glass a newer Jonkershoek wine-farm build tends to carry.

Double roller (day/night): a blockout and a sunscreen fabric on one bracket, so a bedroom with a mountain view gets both privacy-with-light by day and full darkness by night, without swapping blinds.

Where they earn their place up the valley

• New wine-farm homes with big, uninterrupted glass and a kloof view worth keeping.
• Farm-worker cottages and outbuildings, where budget and turnaround matter as much as looks.
• Motorised on wide spans or above double-volume stair voids, where a chain isn't practical.

Being honest about the limits

Very wide, unbroken spans need a join line or a split into linked, motorised blinds — no single fabric width spans a whole glass wall invisibly. And in Jonkershoek's older, heritage-graded homesteads, with small-paned sash windows set deep into lime-washed walls, a timber venetian usually reads better against the architecture than a roller does; we'll say so at the measure if that's the case for your window.

Control & motorisation

Chain control needs a child-safe tensioner as standard. Motorised is the practical choice above stair voids, on wide or heavy fabrics, and anywhere a wind sensor should be doing the thinking for an exposed window on a gusty valley afternoon — see our full motorisation options at the free in-home measure.

What a roller blind costs up the valley

Roller blinds are priced per square metre, installed. Manual — spring or chain, in blockout, sunscreen or a light-filtering weave — comes to R1,000 to R1,600 the square metre, a double roller carrying two fabrics on one bracket sitting near the top of that. Motorised, the same opening runs R2,500 to R3,800, which includes the motor, the control and the setting up on fitting day.

A small window is charged at a minimum rather than by area, because a cottage pane takes the same tube, brackets and visit as a wide one. And a range is not a quotation: each opening on your property is priced at the free measure and confirmed in writing before anything is manufactured.