Roller blinds for the stacker doors and the bedroom glass.

A roller blind is the simplest treatment there is: a single smooth panel of fabric wound onto an aluminium tube, made to measure for the opening in front of it. No folds, no slats — just flat fabric that rises clean into a cassette or plain tube at the top. It's what most rooms in this suburb end up specifying, because it does one job properly and it's honest about what it costs.

The fabric is the decision that actually matters. Blockout suits bedrooms, nurseries and any room where you want total dark, and it doubles as a useful thermal layer against the summer heat coming through west glass and the chill off a south-facing wall in winter. Sunscreen fabric — usually 3% or 5% openness — cuts glare and UV on the lounge or dining glass while keeping the garden view intact through the day; it does reverse at night once the lights go on inside, which is worth knowing before you specify it for a street-facing room.

Choosing the fabric

• Blockout — total light stop, for bedrooms, nurseries and media rooms.
• Sunscreen (3%, 5%, 10% openness) — glare and UV control with the view preserved; the lower the percentage, the more heat and glare it blocks.
• Light-filtering — softens daylight with full privacy where an open view isn't the priority.
• Double roller — blockout and sunscreen on one bracket, for a bedroom that wants both a view by day and total dark at night.

Wide stacker doors, handled properly

A single roller blind runs to around 3m of fabric width before it needs a central join line or a second blind. On a wide stacker-door wall — the standard living-room feature in this suburb — most households either accept a single join in the middle or move to motorised, linked blinds so the whole run opens and closes on one command instead of one seam catching the eye.

Child-safe as standard

Chain-driven rollers are fitted with cord and chain tensioners as a matter of course. For nurseries and children's rooms — and there are plenty of them on these streets — we'll talk you through cordless and motorised options at the measure. No dangling chain is the safest chain of all.

We measure and fit roller blinds across Brackenfell and the neighbouring pockets — Sonstraal Heights, Vredekloof, Protea Heights and Kraaifontein.

Say it in rands

A square metre of roller blind, fitted, comes out between R1,000 and R1,600 on a chain. Where you sit depends on the cloth: a straightforward blockout at one end, a good sunscreen or a double bracket holding two cloths over one opening at the other. Motorise it and the same square metre comes out between R2,500 and R3,800, motor, control and set-up counted in.

Two things that stop this being a simple sum. Little windows cost more per metre than big ones, because the tube, the brackets and the time up a ladder are the same either way — there is a minimum. And what is above is a range for planning, not a price: yours is written per window after the free measure.