Panel blinds

Panel blinds are big, flat, tensioned fabric panels — typically 60cm to 100cm wide — that slide past each other on a track with two, three, four or five channels. Closed, they read as one continuous fabric wall. Open, they stack neatly to one side in a stepped column that takes up remarkably little of the opening.

On the modern Bryanston rebuilds, where the whole back of the house is glass, this is often the treatment that makes the room look designed rather than merely covered.

Two jobs, not one

The obvious job is dressing a wide stack door. The less obvious one is dividing space: a panel track ceiling-mounted across an open-plan room gives you a soft, movable wall between the lounge and the playroom, without building anything permanent.

Practical notes

• Track channels decide the stack: more channels means a tighter stack and a cleaner reveal.
• Ceiling-mounted or wall-mounted — ceiling-mounted looks intentional, wall-mounted is easier to retrofit.
• Available in blockout, translucent and sunscreen fabrics, and you can mix them on the same track.
• A wand or a cordless glide-touch operation keeps the whole thing free of hanging cords.
• Motorisation is available on longer tracks, which is worth it on anything over about four metres.

Where they are not the answer

Small windows. A panel blind on a standard bedroom window looks like a piece of furniture that wandered in. Keep them for the wide openings they were designed for, and use a roller or a venetian elsewhere in the same house — they sit together perfectly well.

What these cost

Guides, per square metre installed: R1,000 to R1,600 hand-operated, R2,500 to R3,800 motorised. Panel systems are priced by the glass they cover rather than by the number of panels, so a wide opening running four or five panels is not five times the cost of one.

On a short opening the track carries most of the cost, which is why anything very small attracts a minimum instead of an area rate. Fabric choice moves the figure as well, from a plain light-filtering panel through to a heavier textured or blockout-backed one. Your price per opening is settled at the free measure and confirmed in writing.