Blinds for Orangeries

About using blinds for your Orangery

What's the difference between an Orangery and a Conservatory?

Conservatory is mainly glass with a few panes of steel in between. An orangery has more brick work in it, so typically there'll be bifold doors, brick pillars, a solid ceiling, and then some kind of skylight or roof lancet above it. It depends whether your orangery is then south facing or north facing as to what you want to in terms of the blind. The blind could be there to control glare and heat, or it might actually be helping you keep that room really much warmer.

Firstly, triangles are really quite difficult to put blinds on. In an bedroom, they're even harder to make completely blackout or very dim out. So, if you like to sleep in the dark and not be woken up in the summer at four am when the sun rises, I really would think again about having shaped windows in a bedroom.

Sometimes we get told the architect has designed a skylight in a bedroom, but they like to sleep in the dark. Okay, stop there. Why on Earth do you need a skylight right above your bed? You probably need some light in your room, but I'm sure there's somewhere for a window. If you have to have a skylight, and that's the only place you can get light and ventilation into your bedroom, then please plan your blinds beforehand. We can then make sure that the blackout is complete, and so at dawn on a summer's day you're not being woken up, and we can make it as quiet and pleasant as possible.

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How to control the temperature in your garden room?

Welcome to 90 Seconds with the Boss. I'm Ellen and I'm here to help you live wiser. Today's question is: How do I control the temperature in my garden room? Garden rooms are lovely, they're meant to be light and airy and let in some of the heat. So you're meant to be using them on a nice day. However they can get too hot. So if you're thinking of having one built right now, try and have a look at some of these options. For example, we would always recommend roof vents. Once they're lifted, obviously some of the hot airt can escape. If you've got a solid roof, got nowhere to go; it's just gonna build up and up and up. Can have air conditioning put in, obviously quite expensive, not something we often need in this country. But on those very hot days, you might be pleased with it.

There is special glass, that often shades or stops the light coming in too much, but it doesn't often let the heat back out. So it can actually make your garden room a bit hotter. And then obviously there's what we do: there's blinds. The blinds can help reflect some of those light waves back out, they can provide shade, that certainly cuts down the UV so that the flooring and the furniture doesn't degrade. And just the shading obviously helps control the glare as well. Our goal however is always to stop the room getting too hot, rather than then trying to cool it down when it's uncomfortable. So motorization is perfect. You can have motorization on the roof vent as you can on the blinds. So you want to be able to let that hot air, make sure the shading's in place as the temperature ramps up throughout the day.

Don't come home form work to a boiling hot room and then have to throw open all the doors and windows. Time's up. If you have a question about conservatories or garden rooms, please leave it below. Otherwise I'll see you next time.

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