Thirteen Blinds and a Perthshire Conservatory Roof
Thirteen cellular blinds went into a Perthshire conservatory roof this week, and ten of them are a different shape from every other one in the room. A conservatory roof isn't a set of windows. Every pane sits at a different angle, the pitch changes as it comes off the ridge, and the two sides mirror each other, so a blind made for the left of the roof won't sit on the right. Ten of these thirteen are shaped, cut to the line of the glazing above them, and every one had to be drawn before it could be made. We do a roof like this in two visits. The first fits an aluminium mounting profile right round the perimeter. Once that's up, every blind is measured off the fitted profile rather than off the glass, which is the only way to get a shaped roof blind to sit true. The drawings then go to the factory, manufacturing takes about six weeks, and the second visit is hanging them. The fabric is a 25mm honeycomb cellular in an off white translucent. Each cell holds a pocket of still air between the room and the glazing above it, and that trapped air is what slows heat moving through the roof, in both directions. The difference in the room was immediate. Under bare glass the light is relentless and there's nowhere to escape it. With the blinds up it's somewhere you'd happily sit.
