How Outdoor Shade Can Change the Way You Use Your Home
One Sydney terrace, unused for two summers, and what changed when the shade went up. Outdoor blinds, PowerView automation and twenty square metres returned.
The terrace was twenty square metres, west-facing, and had been furnished twice. Both times the furniture had migrated to the shaded corner within a month and then indoors by February. When we first measured it the owners described the space, without any prompting, as wasted — which is a striking way to describe the best-positioned part of your own house.
The problem was not the paving or the planting. It was that from around eleven in the morning the space belonged to the sun, and by mid-afternoon the glass doors behind it were passing that heat straight into the living room. Two rooms were being lost, not one.
What we specified
A Luxaflex® Evo MagnaTrack® Awning across the open western side, in a charcoal mesh chosen to match the window frames, with the housing recessed into the existing soffit so nothing is visible when it is up. The mesh holds the view through to the garden while stopping the heat at the edge of the deck rather than at the glass, which is the distinction that matters: shade works by keeping the energy outside the building envelope.
We added Luxaflex® PowerView® Automation across the run, on a schedule that lowers the blind at eleven and lifts it at five. That decision did more for the outcome than any other, because it removed the need for anyone to notice the heat and do something about it.
What changed
The measurable change is twenty square metres returned to daily use, and a living room that no longer needs the air conditioning running from two o’clock. The change the owners talk about is where dinner happens. The table moved outside in November and has not come back in; the children have taken the space over on weekends; and the room that had been written off twice is now the one the family defends when anyone suggests rearranging it.
What it cost, and what it did not
The work took one measure visit, one manufacturing lead time and a single day on site. Nothing was demolished, no trade other than ours came to the house, and the family did not move out for a week. That is the argument for looking at shade before considering a structural addition: the same amount of usable floor area, at a fraction of the disruption, and reversible if the house is ever sold to someone who wants the space differently.
This is the part of the job that keeps us interested after twenty-five years. Window coverings are not decoration; they decide which rooms of a house are habitable at which hours. Get the shade right and you have added a room without adding a square metre of building.
If there is a space in your own home that everybody walks through and nobody sits in, it is worth having someone look at the sun angles before you spend anything on furniture. We are a Luxaflex® Window Fashions Gallery Dealer in Double Bay, and the visit costs nothing.
Book a free in-home measure and quote at astyleofshade.com.au/contact-us/, or call 1300 347 967.
Related Articles
- How to Create an Outdoor Room in Your Sydney Home
- 5 Things to Consider Before Choosing an Awning
- How to Create Shade Without Losing the Beauty of Your Home
Explore the range
- Evo MagnaTrack® Awnings — Tracked outdoor blinds rated to 185 km/h, sealed edge to edge.
- PowerView® Motorisation — Scheduled scenes, app and voice control, no cabling.
- Plantation Shutters — PolySatin® louvres that hold light and lose the sightline.
Book a free in-home measure and quote at astyleofshade.com.au/contact-us/, or call 1300 347 967. A Style of Shade, 430–432 New South Head Road, Double Bay NSW 2028.