Day-night blinds

How it actually works

A day-night blind (you will also hear zebra or vision blind) is a single loop of fabric with alternating opaque and transparent horizontal bands. It runs over the tube as a continuous loop, so a short pull on the chain slides the front layer against the back layer. Bands aligned: you see through. Bands offset: the solid stripes close the gap.

The point is that you change the character of the window without changing its height. A conventional roller only gives you light by giving up the top of the window; a day-night gives you light and privacy at full drop.

Where we specify it in Waterkloof

Street-facing rooms in the older parts of Brooklyn and Hazelwood, where the window sits close to a boundary wall and you want daylight without an audience. Ridge lounges where the view is the whole point but the four-o'clock glare is not. Guest rooms and studies that have to be two things at different hours.

• Full daylight and outward view with the bands aligned.
• Privacy and softened light with the bands offset — no need to drop the blind.
• Chain or motorised operation; motors make sense on anything above about two metres wide.
• Not a blackout product. Where a room must go genuinely dark, pair it with a blockout roller or specify a double bracket.

Honest limitation

Because the fabric is a loop, a day-night blind needs a little more space above the window than a plain roller, and the loop makes it slightly heavier to operate by hand at wide sizes. On a four-metre stack door we would recommend either splitting it into two blinds or motorising it. We will tell you which at the measure.

What a day-night blind costs

Sheer and solid bands in one fabric put this above a plain roller on price. Installed, a chain-operated blind runs R1,300 to R2,000 the square metre and a motorised one R2,800 to R4,000. Band width, a cassette over the roll and a semi-blockout fabric all move a window towards the upper end of its band.

A narrow window is billed at a minimum, since the hardware and the fitting visit cost the same whatever the size. The exact figure per window follows the free measure and comes to you in writing.