Blinds in Brooklyn

Brooklyn's problem is rarely heat first — it is proximity. Stands are tighter than on the ridge, boundary walls sit near the windows, and a good number of rooms look straight onto a pavement or a neighbour's side elevation. People here call us about privacy and daylight in the same sentence.

Before you read on. The Waterkloof Sun & Reveal Field Guide covers the sun angles and elevation-by-elevation reasoning behind everything below, with sources, for the whole area this site serves.

What we usually specify here

Day-night blinds do more work in Brooklyn than anywhere else we serve, because they solve exactly that pair of problems: slide the bands into line for full daylight and view, offset them for privacy without dropping the blind and losing the room's light. On street-facing bedrooms and studies, a cellular blind with a top-down/bottom-up track does the same job differently — sky in, eyes out.

In the older houses along the leafier streets, timber venetians remain the right answer: tall casements, deep reveals and joinery worth respecting. And in the apartments near the university edge, where you cannot drill into a facade and the body corporate has a view on what is visible, we fit inside the reveal and keep everything internal.

The practical constraints

• Apartment and complex rules usually govern anything visible from outside — we quote to the approved colour where it is known.
• Older frames are frequently out of square; we face-fit to the moulding line where an inside fit would show the discrepancy.
• Street noise is a real complaint on the through-roads; a cellular blind or a closed roller shutter both dampen it noticeably.