Openness, Cells and Colour: Choosing Blind Fabric in Midstream

Centurion sits about 1,453 metres up, and thin air means fiercer ultraviolet. Fabric on the sun side of a Midstream house works harder than the same cloth would at the coast, so choose it for performance first and let the colour follow.

Sunscreen: how open is open?

Sunscreen is an open-weave mesh, sold by its openness: 3, 5 or 10 percent. On hard west glass, 3 to 5 percent stops more heat and glare; a higher figure keeps more of the garden you are looking at. It also takes much of the ultraviolet load off floors and furniture. The catch is the evening, when lights indoors make the mesh see-through from outside.

Roller blinds →

Blockout and light-filtering cloth

Blockout has no middle setting. Down is dark, up is everything, and it adds a real thermal layer on a cold night. That makes it right for main bedrooms, nurseries and anyone on shift work, and a poor tenant on a north living room where the June sun is worth having. Light-filtering fabric sits between the two: softened daylight and privacy, with neither full darkness nor a view.

Cell fabrics

Cellular blinds come in single and double cells, in light-filtering or blockout versions. Single cell is enough for a mild room. Double cell does the heavier insulating and deadens more sound. Blockout cells in a main bedroom facing the morning sun give darkness with the thermal bonus built in. All of them are soft pleated fabric, so they belong in living spaces and bedrooms, not beside a dusty back door.

Cellular honeycomb blinds →

Colour indoors and from the street

On an open stand the light is flat and bright, and pale fabrics glow more than people expect, so check samples against the actual glass. With sunscreen mesh, darker colours usually give the cleaner view out. From outside, fascias and cassettes are colour-matched to the window frames, which keeps a street elevation tidy and sits comfortably with an estate that takes an interest in what shows.

Reviewed November 2026 for Midstream.