Venetian blinds

Everything else on this site either blocks light or filters it. A venetian steers it. Tilt the slats up and the afternoon sun bounces off the ceiling and fills the room with soft light instead of landing on the couch. Tilt them down and you get privacy from the street while the sky stays visible.

That single trick is why venetians survive every fashion cycle, and why they still make the most sense in rooms where the light changes hour by hour.

Timber venetians

50mm slats in real or engineered timber, hung on cloth ladder tapes. Warm, substantial and very much at home in the older thatch-and-brick Bryanston houses — deep window reveals, painted frames, that kind of room. The wide slat gives a generous view when open and a clean horizontal line when closed.

What they are not is a bathroom product. Sustained steam will eventually move real timber. In a bathroom or a scullery we will steer you to aluminium and say why.

Aluminium venetians

25mm or 50mm slats in powder-coated aluminium. Completely indifferent to steam, splashes and cooking — the practical choice for kitchens, sculleries, bathrooms and laundries. The 25mm slat suits smaller windows and gives a finer line; 50mm reads closer to timber across a big opening.

They also wipe clean, which after a Joburg dust season is not a small thing.

Controls

• Wand tilt as standard on most sizes — a rigid wand you twist, with no cord hanging anywhere.
• Cord lift with a wall-anchored safety tensioner where a cord is unavoidable.
• Motorised tilt and lift on wide or high windows, including stair and gable glass you cannot reach.
• Slats can be ordered to match a specific frame or ceiling colour rather than settling for the nearest stock shade.

Where they earn their place in Bryanston

Studies and home offices, where screen glare is the actual problem and tilting the slats solves it without going dark. East-facing bedrooms that get a hard 5am summer sunrise. And any street-facing room where you want privacy at eye level but no interest in losing the view of the garden above it.

What these cost

Most of the figure rides on the slat. Guides, per square metre installed: aluminium in 25mm or 50mm at R1,000 to R1,500 on a wand or cord, R2,500 to R3,600 motorised; timber, wider and hand-finished, at R1,600 to R2,600 hand-operated, R3,000 to R4,500 with a motorised tilt.

Specify by the room rather than by the price list: aluminium for bathrooms, sculleries and anywhere that meets steam, timber for dry living rooms and studies. Reversing that later costs more than getting it right first time. Narrow openings attract a minimum, because headrail, tilt mechanism and ladder tapes barely change with the window. Each is quoted on its own line, in writing.