Roller blinds

Blockout: for the rooms that must go dark

A blockout roller is a coated fabric that stops light rather than filtering it. It's what we fit in main bedrooms and any room that needs to go properly dark — and on a west-facing suite here that usually means the hour before sunset as much as the early morning. A roller hangs a few millimetres off the glass, so a thin halo of light always finds the edges; where true darkness matters more than nearly-dark, we add slim aluminium side channels and the halo disappears.

Sunscreen: for the rooms that must keep the Atlantic view

Sunscreen is an open-weave mesh, typically 3–10% openness. Lower openness stops more heat and glare and shows less of the view; higher openness keeps more of both. On a living room or a stack door facing the water, 5% is the number that comes up again and again: the glare goes, the Atlantic stays in view.

The mesh does thermal work as well as visual work. A pale sunscreen reflects heat back out through the glass before the room absorbs it; a dark sunscreen gives a crisper view but takes on more of that heat itself. We show you both at the measure, in the room, at the hour the sun is actually the problem.

Where a roller earns its keep

• Bedrooms — blockout, ideally with side channels on any west-facing suite.
• Living rooms with a sea view — sunscreen, so the Atlantic outlook survives the afternoon.
• Kitchens and sculleries — a wipeable flat sheet with nowhere for salt residue or cooking grease to collect.
• Wide stack doors onto a terrace — either one wide blind on a heavier tube, or several linked on one motor.
• Upper-floor glass — motorised, because nobody wants a chain hanging three storeys above street level.

Two fabrics, one bracket

Where a room needs both jobs done properly, a double roller puts a sunscreen and a blockout on the same bracket: mesh down by day, blockout down at night. If you'd rather have one blind doing both, ask about a day-night blind, which alternates sheer and solid bands in a single fabric.

Controls and child safety

A roller runs on a side chain, a spring mechanism or a motor. Every chain we fit is tensioned and anchored to the wall as standard — not on request. In nurseries, playrooms and any low window we'll steer you towards a motorised or cordless control instead, so there's nothing hanging at all.