Cellular & honeycomb blinds for Durbanville’s big glass

Trapped air is insulation. That's the whole idea behind a cellular blind, and it's a genuinely useful one in a valley where a north or west-facing room can run hot through a long summer afternoon and then feel the chill of a proper wet Cape winter a few months later. Single cells suit milder rooms, double cells do the serious thermal work — cooler summer rooms, warmer winter ones, and a bit quieter too, since the cells absorb sound as well as heat.

Options worth knowing about

• Light-filtering or blockout cell fabrics — blockout cells give a bedroom genuine darkness with the thermal bonus built in.
• Top-down / bottom-up operation — privacy at the bottom, light and sky at the top. A strong option for street-facing rooms and any window a passer-by or neighbour can see straight into.
• Cordless and motorised operation — and the slimmest stack of any blind when raised, which matters on a tall gable window.
• Skylight and shaped-window versions — the cell structure holds its shape on an angle, useful for the gable ends common on Durbanville’s farmstead-style roofs.

Where it earns its keep in Durbanville

Energy-conscious renovations, bedrooms and nurseries that need dark-quiet-warm all at once, and any room where the family has noticed “that side of the house is always the hot one in summer and the cold one in winter” — a fair description of quite a few Durbanville homes built to face the afternoon sun and the view together.