07 Jun 17
Towering glazed gables, asymmetric windows, lantern lights, glass boxes and giant bi-folds are all part of the language of contemporary buildings. They make impressive statements, but can be hard to screen - often a necessity for both privacy and climate control.
This remarkable eco-house in Oxfordshire sits above, and flows into, a multi-level garden with decking and lush plantings. Large areas of glass give views from every angle. This makes screening a necessity for climate control on sunny days and privacy, especially in the bedrooms.
Grand Design Blinds designed and installed bespoke electric blinds throughout. These were planned into the design of the house right from the beginning, so that all the large windows and sliding doors along the front of the building, together with the skylights in the bedrooms, were built with special recesses, completely hiding the blinds when not in use.
Extra-large roller blinds are used in the open plan kitchen/living room and down the corridor, but the master bedroom needed a different solution to screen the giant (3 metres high x 4.2 metres wide) window with its difficult 90? return.
Here, pleated Duette blinds were chosen over roller blinds: Aesthetically, a roller blind, when down, would look like a blank wall and practically, it’s difficult to achieve total blackout/privacy with roller blinds. It would also have been impossible to use a roller blind to screen the narrow return window. Duette’s pleated construction offers more visual interest, more effective blackout and the ability to make a matching slim blind to screen the return. It also allows a perfect match to the Duette blind which screens the skylight.
All the blinds throughout the house were connected to the building's Loxone home automation system, enabling them to be automatically operated according to the angle of the sun and the temperature inside the house.
Grand Design Blinds undertake projects worldwide. All of their blinds are handmade to order in the UK.
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