An insulating buffer for the room that stays cold

Every Tokai home has one — the room that’s always a little colder than the rest, usually the one facing the plantation rather than the street. Trapped air is genuine insulation, and a cellular blind puts a soft buffer of it directly against glass that’s losing heat to a shaded wall outside. It’s not a fix for the whole house; it’s a targeted answer for the specific rooms that need it.

The honest thermal case

Single cells suit a mild room; double cells do more work in the room that runs genuinely cold through a Cape Town winter, or holds heat awkwardly on the rare hot forest-shaded day. The cells also absorb a noticeable amount of sound, which helps in a bedroom close to a busy road frontage. We keep the claims qualitative — comfort and a lower heating load, not invented percentages.

Where it earns its place in a Tokai home

• Nurseries and bedrooms on the forest-facing side, where blockout cell fabric gives genuine darkness plus the thermal bonus.
• Renovated additions with more glass than the original build, where the room above a garage or a new glazed extension is “always freezing.”
• Top-down/bottom-up operation for a street-facing window — privacy at the bottom, light and sky at the top, without losing the thermal benefit.

What a honeycomb costs

Guide figures, per square metre, installed. A corded or cordless cellular blind runs roughly R1,500 to R2,800 per square metre — a single cell in a light-filtering fabric at the lower end, a double cell or a blockout-lined cell at the upper, where most of the thermal work happens. Motorised, budget roughly R3,000 to R4,800 per square metre, which is the band for a top-down bottom-up bedroom blind or anything on a tall gable window.

Small openings carry a minimum charge, because the headrail, brackets and time on site barely change with the size of the glass. Treat the figures as a way to plan: your own windows are priced after the free measure and given to you in writing before production starts.