Pleated & Honeycomb Blinds

Most conservatories get four weeks of proper use a year. Craig has read 45 degrees off a thermometer at the ridge of a polycarbonate roof in August. Come January it is the coldest room in the house. The roof does nearly all of it, taking heat in through the glass all day and losing it again after dark, so blinds on the side windows barely register.

Honeycomb, or cellular, fabric folds into sealed pockets that hold still air. Same idea as the gap in a double glazed unit, only in fabric. A 25mm single cell takes the edge off. A 45mm double cell is worth the money, and the colour books run past a hundred, sheer through to blackout. Now the honest bit. On an ordinary lounge window in a house with decent loft insulation, honeycomb will never show on a gas bill.

Pleated fabric concertinas instead of rolling, which is why it ends up in roofs. It gets made as a triangle, a raked gable, a lean-to pitch or a fan over a door head, and a 2 metre drop still stacks back to around 60mm. Roof blinds run on tensioned stainless wires so nothing sags off the pitch. Up there Craig pays the extra for reflective SPC backing every time. Motorise anything you cannot reach with a pole. Top-down bottom-up covers the lower half and leaves the sky open.

There is no tolerance in a roof panel. Three millimetres over and the blind fouls the glazing bar, then sits crooked for ten years. Nineties conservatories round Culcheth are rarely square, so every panel gets measured on its own. Craig does that himself, samples in the van.