The fabric decision
Choosing between blockout, sunscreen and light-filtering
A roller blind is a fabric panel on an aluminium tube — spring, chain or motor driven — and the whole decision comes down to the fabric behind it. Blockout is the right call for main bedrooms and kids' rooms that catch Lynnwood's low afternoon sun: total light stop, and a genuine thermal benefit against a highveld summer afternoon or a frosty winter night. Sunscreen, in an openness factor of 3%, 5% or 10%, cuts glare and UV on a big lounge window while keeping the garden view — the lower the percentage, the more heat and glare it blocks, at the cost of a little view. It gives daytime privacy, but reverses at night once the lights are on inside, so it's usually paired with a second roller or curtains in bedrooms.
For a room that needs both — a west-facing lounge that also wants a view through the morning — a double roller puts blockout and sunscreen on one bracket, so you switch between them without swapping hardware.
Control is chain (with a wall-anchored tensioner as standard, for child safety), spring-assist, or motorised — see our motorised blinds & automation page if you're leaning that way. Cassette or pelmet valances hide the tube and can be colour-matched to the frame; single blinds run to around 3m of fabric width before a central join or a motorised, linked pair makes more sense — useful on the wide stacking doors common in Lynnwood's renovated kitchens.
What a roller works out at
Take a square metre of roller blind, hung: on a chain that is R1,000 through to R1,600, the cloth deciding where. A straightforward blockout sits low; a good sunscreen, or one bracket carrying two cloths over the same window, sits high. On a motor the same square metre is R2,500 through to R3,800, tube motor, control and set-up counted.
The rate loses its sense on a very small window — the tube, the brackets and the time on a ladder do not shrink, so those price to a floor. And a rate is not a quotation: yours is written window by window once a consultant has been out, and that visit costs nothing.