Service area
Mountainside homes above the valley with hard afternoon exposure.
Capri Village sits within our core service area — the same consultant-led measure, made-to-order manufacture and clean installation we bring to Noordhoek itself.
Local guide: The Noordhoek Wind, Light & Salt Playbook walks through which blinds suit which elevation here, with a two-minute ballpark tool and free-measure booking.
Capri sits up the slope on the eastern shoulder of the valley, which means most of its living rooms look back across the paddocks and the beach — roughly west and south-west, the aspect the whole valley finds hardest to shade. Height does not help with that. At about 34° south the summer noon sun climbs to something near 79°, so a decent eave handles the middle of a December day on a north wall without any assistance from us. The problem arrives later: in a Cape summer the sun sets in the south-west, low and flat, and it comes in under the roofline rather than over it. A hillside position simply gives it a longer, cleaner run at the glass.
Two things ride along with that low sun. The first is bounced light off the beach and the wetland below, which is why a Capri lounge can feel glary even when the sun itself is behind a gable. The second is ultraviolet: Cape Town's summer UV runs extreme from about October to March, peaking between ten and two, and it is what fades a rug, a timber floor and eventually the fabric itself.
On the western living glass we usually start with a sunscreen mesh rather than anything solid, because the outlook is the reason the house is where it is. On a room that genuinely overheats in February, stopping the sun outside the pane does more than darkening it inside: an interior blockout removes the light but the glass behind it still warms and radiates into the room all evening. Bedrooms on the east and south-east side are a separate conversation, since a Cape summer sunrise sits in the south-east and puts low, direct light into a room from just after five.
Indoors, timber venetian slats suit the drier living rooms and studies and give precise control of a low afternoon beam by angle rather than by height. Bathrooms, sculleries and any room breathing salt air take powder-coated aluminium instead, because moisture and salt will do to timber over a few years exactly what you would expect.
An elevated position on an open valley catches more wind, not less. Cape Town runs on two seasonal winds and this valley takes both: the dry, hard south-easter through summer, and north-westerly fronts off the Atlantic in winter with rain and gusts that reach severe gale strength. On a stoep or a veranda that means a captive-edge screen, with the fabric running in welded side channels so it stays tensioned, rather than an open-sided drop blind that will be flogged to pieces inside a season.
How exposed a particular opening really is varies across a hillside, sometimes from one corner of a house to the next, so it is gauged on the day rather than assumed. Where an opening will not take an open blind, we would rather say so at the measure than replace it a year later.
Whether a blind sits inside the reveal or has to face-fix comes down to millimetres, and on older steel or deep-set openings also to what there is behind the plaster to fix into. How much salt a window really gets varies with how directly it faces the sea, and that decides the grade of the hardware rather than the look of it. Where a motor is going onto high gable glass, the cable route or the charging position is a look-at-it decision. And mesh openness and colour read very differently in this valley's bright, big-sky light, which is why samples come to the window rather than the other way around.
We also fit in Kommetjie, Sun Valley & Sunnydale, Fish Hoek upper and Simon's Town side.
Noordhoek Blinds