Noordhoek
Wide country spans and high gables reached from a remote — with schedules for the west light.
Motorised blinds put every window on a remote, wall switch, phone app, schedule or sensor. Rechargeable battery motors retrofit without wiring; wired motors suit new builds and heavy systems. On wide spans, high glass and multi-blind walls, motorisation is less a luxury than the only practical control.
On a normal-height window a motor is a convenience. On the country-scale glass and high gables common in this valley it is closer to the only workable answer, because a blind nobody can reach is a blind nobody adjusts, and an unadjusted blind is just a permanently dark room. One remote instead of a stepladder changes how a room actually gets used. The same applies to a wide span carried on two linked blinds, where a motor is what makes them move together as one window rather than two.
Outdoors it is a durability question rather than a comfort one. Any exterior screen or awning on an exposed opening here should carry a wind sensor that retracts it automatically, because the summer south-easter and the winter north-westerly fronts do not wait for someone to be home. That sensor is part of the specification on an exposed position, not an upsell to be argued about.
Rechargeable battery motors need no cabling at all, which makes them the straightforward retrofit in a house that is already finished — no chasing walls, no patching and repainting. The trade is a charging routine you have to keep, every few months. Wired motors suit new work and renovations where an electrician is on site anyway, and they are the better call for heavier systems and anything exterior.
Control runs from a handset or wall switch through to schedules and sensors. A schedule that drops the west-facing shading before the low afternoon sun arrives is worth more here than almost any other automation, because in a Cape summer that sun sets in the south-west and comes in under the roofline where no eave can catch it. Where power can run, and where a sensor should sit, is a look-at-it decision on tall glass rather than something to settle over the phone.
Motorised shading is priced by the product the motor drives, so the honest answer is a spread: R2,500 to R7,500 per square metre installed across the range, as a guide. A motorised sunscreen or blockout roller sits at R2,500 to R3,800. A motorised aluminium venetian runs R2,500 to R3,600 and a timber one R3,000 to R4,500. A motorised zip screen, out on the weather side, runs R4,000 to R6,000 per square metre of screen.
Those bands include the motor, the handset or wall control and the setting-up on the day. The electrical work is excluded: a wired 220V motor needs a power point at the head of the opening, and that belongs to the electrician rather than to us. Small blinds attract a minimum, and the quote lists motorisation as its own line on each window, so you can motorise the four openings that matter and leave the rest manual. Nothing is fixed until the free measure has been done and the written quote issued.
Motorisation is especially popular on the wide country-style glass and high gables we see across Kommetjie, Sun Valley & Sunnydale, Capri Village, Fish Hoek upper and Simon's Town side.
Noordhoek Blinds