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An upper-floor Hazelwood apartment's floor-to-ceiling glass fitted with a flat sunscreen roller blind half lowered, the crowns of tall established trees just below the balcony and open Highveld sky beyond

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Written for Hazelwood

The Hazelwood Window Field Guide

How the Pretoria sun crosses this suburb through the year, why the tree canopy shades the ground floor while the apartment upper floors take it full in the glass, and what we'd fit on each elevation — with the honest catch on every option said out loud.

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One suburb, two shading problems, sitting side by side.

Hazelwood is a small, stately pocket wrapped around the top of the Pretoria Country Club, east of Waterkloof and a short hop from the Brooklyn café strip. What makes it unusual to shade is that it holds two kinds of house at once, often on the same street: beautifully kept older family homes on leafy stands, and newer penthouse-style, lock-up-and-go apartments and townhouses built for security and low upkeep — clean lines, big glass, fibre-ready. The two eras answer the sun completely differently, so a quote that treats the whole suburb on one setting gets half of it wrong.

The tell is the trees. Hazelwood's canopy is heavier and more continuous than in a lot of neighbouring suburbs, and it does real shading work — a mature jacaranda or plane over a north-east garden takes the edge off the ground-floor rooms for free. But the newer apartment blocks lift their top floors clear above that canopy line, and up there a floor-to-ceiling glass wall gets the sun raw: no branches, no eave deep enough, nothing between the pane and a near-vertical summer sky. Shaded low, exposed high — sometimes in the same building. That split is the spine of everything below.

The light here

25°44′ south, thirteen hundred metres up.

Every figure below is sourced at the foot of the page. These are Pretoria's numbers, and Hazelwood sits squarely inside them.

  1. Nearly overhead in December, low and due north in June

    At the December solstice the midday sun stands about 88° over Pretoria — almost vertical — so it lands on roofs, balconies and the tops of the trees, and a north wall is barely lit at noon. By June that same sun sits at about 41°, low and due north right through the middle of the day: free winter warmth through the very same north glass.

  2. In summer the sun rises and sets behind the houses

    Midsummer sunrise is round at an azimuth near 117° — well south of due east — and sunset near 243°, south of due west, almost fourteen hours later. That means east and west glass takes hours of low, direct, near-horizontal sun that no overhead eave can block. In winter those points swing to roughly 64° and 296°.

  3. Warmer than Johannesburg, and a big daily swing

    Pretoria is classified Cwa — humid subtropical with a dry winter, one band warmer than the Joburg parks belt. January afternoons average near 28.7 °C; July nights drop near 6.9 °C. A single-glazed or large-glazed Hazelwood room travels a long way between those two in a single day, hot by mid-morning in summer, cold by a July dawn.

  4. A summer storm season that arrives fast

    Most of the ~661 mm annual rain falls in the summer half, largely as late-afternoon and evening thunderstorms from November to March. Gauteng is one of the country's worst hail belts, and the most violent hail-bearing storms come early in the season, around October to December. Anything living outside the glass has to be specified around that storm arriving quickly.

  5. Altitude buys you extra ultraviolet

    High pressure keeps Highveld skies clear, and at around 1,300 m the thinner air filters less UV — intensity climbs roughly 10% per 1,000 m, and southern Africa already runs some of the world's highest readings. Ultraviolet breaks the bonds in dyes: it fades a rug, a timber floor and, in time, the blind fabric itself. Cutting UV at the glass protects the room, not only your eyes.

Elevation by elevation

Which way the window faces matters more than the room.

Walk the house once with the compass on your phone. Then read the height into it — ground floor under the canopy is a different window from the same aspect three storeys up.

  1. North — let the eave and the canopy do the first job

    North glass takes the near-vertical summer sun and the low winter one, so it's the one elevation where a horizontal projection earns its keep: a deep eave or balcony above blocks most of December while still letting the low June sun in to warm the room. That's the exact geometry SANS 10400-XA applies to new builds. On a ground-floor north window already under a mature tree, the interior blind is there for glare and UV, not heat — a sunscreen roller is usually plenty. Up on an exposed apartment top floor with no useful overhang, the same aspect needs far more.

  2. West — the elevation that ruins the afternoon

    Through the year the sun sets between about 243° and 296°, and by then it's low, arriving under any eave and straight onto the glass — so an overhead projection does almost nothing. This is the Hazelwood afternoon-lounge and west-bedroom problem, and it's the elevation worth spending on. Stopping the heat outside the pane beats absorbing it inside every time.

  3. East — the same geometry, half the penalty

    East glass gets the mirror image from about first light, but the walls and air are still cool, so glare and being woken early matter more than heat gain. An east bedroom is a blockout conversation; an east breakfast room usually just wants a sunscreen mesh to take the hard edge off the morning.

  4. South — not immune, just late to it

    Because midsummer sunrise and sunset both sit south of the east–west line, a south wall catches a thin slice of low sun early and late in December and almost none in winter. These are the coolest, flattest-lit rooms in the house — best dressed lightly, with the budget moved to the west side where it does real work.

What we'd fit, and why

The reasoning, and the honest catch with each.

Nothing here is right on every window. Each of these beats its obvious alternative on a particular Hazelwood elevation, and each costs you something. Tap Add to my enquiry and it drops straight onto the form at the foot of the page — sizes optional, nothing to retype.

Roller blinds — sunscreen or blockout

Best on: garden- and street-facing glass (sunscreen) · bedrooms (blockout)

Why here. A single smooth sheet of fabric on a slim tube — no folds, no slats, no fuss — and the workhorse for most Hazelwood rooms. A 3–5% openness sunscreen keeps the leafy-street or country-club view while cutting glare and much of the UV that fades floors. Blockout does the opposite job for a bedroom: one flat panel that answers a 5 a.m. midsummer sunrise.

The catch. Sunscreen reverses after dark — lights on inside and passers-by see far more in, so it isn't a night-privacy fabric. Blockout is only as dark as its edges: on a not-quite-square reveal there's a light line down each side. A double roller puts both fabrics on one bracket.

Day & night blinds

Best on: street-facing cluster and apartment windows

Why here. Alternating sheer and solid bands slide past each other, so one blind moves from open view to eye-level privacy without ever being fully raised. On a Hazelwood apartment window facing a shared driveway or a neighbour's block a few metres away, that's a gentler daylight-and-privacy answer than dropping a blockout every time someone walks past.

The catch. Never a true blockout, and the banding is a strong horizontal pattern against plain contemporary joinery. Worth holding a sample against your own frame before you commit a whole living-room wall to it.

A cellular honeycomb blind inside a tall floor-to-ceiling Hazelwood apartment window, the hexagonal air-cells visible in cross-section at the side edge, greenery blurred beyond the glass

Cellular / honeycomb blinds

Best on: big apartment glass and any room that bakes then chills

Why here. The fabric folds into hexagonal cells that hold a layer of still air against the glass — genuine insulation. On a double-volume or floor-to-ceiling apartment window that's hot by mid-morning in summer and near-freezing by a July dawn, that trapped-air layer is the least invasive comfort upgrade going: nothing about the glazing itself gets touched, and it quiets the room a little too.

The catch. It sits inside the glass, so against a hard west sun it's only slowing heat that's already through the pane — an exterior product beats it there. On a bad west apartment window the honest answer is often both: cellular for the winter comfort, something outside for the summer heat.

Aluminium & timber venetians

Best on: kitchens and bathrooms (aluminium) · studies and bedrooms (timber)

Why here. A low western or eastern sun is a sideways problem, and a tilting slat answers it sideways — close the angle and the direct beam stops while the room stays bright and the view survives. Crisp aluminium suits a contemporary Hazelwood kitchen and shrugs off steam; warm timber softens all the plaster and glass in a study or bedroom.

The catch. Timber stacks deeper than a roller, so it eats more glass when fully raised, and it dislikes a steamy bathroom — which is the whole reason wet rooms get aluminium instead. Wide spans get heavy; past a certain width we'd split the run or motorise it.

Motorisation & automation

Best on: high glass, exposed outdoor shading, anything on a cluster street face

Why here. A blind nobody can reach is a blind nobody adjusts, and a top-floor apartment window is exactly that. A sun sensor drops the west-facing blinds at three in the afternoon on its own; a wind sensor retracts an awning before a storm, even while the house is empty. It removes every cord and chain — the default a security-minded, small-children market tends to want — and reads as tidy from the street, which matters where a body corporate watches the appearance.

The catch. Motors need power. Battery motors trade a cable route for a charge every few months; hard-wired is neatest but wants planning, ideally before the ceiling closes on a new build. On an existing home, a cable route that doesn't chase a finished wall is a real question we'd answer at the window, not over email.

An external aluminium venetian blind mounted outside a large west-facing window on a clean-lined modern Hazelwood home, wide louvres tilted against a low golden afternoon sun

External venetians & roller shutters

Best on: hard west and exposed upper-floor glass with no useful overhang

Why here. Both stop the sun outside the glass, which keeps a room genuinely cooler than absorbing it inside: an interior blockout kills the glare instantly, but the pane still heats and radiates into the room all evening. External venetians tilt, so you keep a view while stopping the beam; roller shutters close fully into a slim head box for heat and blackout in one. This is the answer for an apartment top floor above the canopy line.

The catch. In relative terms these are the dearest options in the guide. Both want a wind sensor through the storm season, usually want a motor, and count as changes to the outside of the building — which is where the cluster-rules note below bites hardest. Shading, not security: our roller shutters are made for sun, heat and glare control on the outside of the glass. They are not security-rated shutters — that's a different product, which we can quote on request.

A retractable folding-arm awning extended with no posts over a paved Hazelwood terrace table, huge established trees shading the leafy garden around it

Folding-arm awnings & zip screens

Best on: the entertainer's patio, the braai deck, the terrace table

Why here. A folding-arm awning shades a Hazelwood terrace with no posts in the way and folds back when you want the winter sun on the table again — which is why it beats a fixed pergola on a deck you actually use. A zip screen does a different job: mesh under tension in sealed side channels, holding its shape in wind while still showing you the garden and keeping the evening insects off the braai.

The catch. This is the Highveld from about October to March. Wind and hail ratings are engineering limits, not marketing, and an awning caught open in a sudden storm gust doesn't survive it — so on any exposed Hazelwood deck we'd specify a motor and a wind sensor rather than a manual awning.

Optional

Want this guide marked up for your own house?

Tell us which rooms are the problem and we'll send this back to you with notes against your actual elevations — which of the answers above we'd start with, and which we'd leave alone. No visit involved, and no obligation to book one.

We use these details only to send you the guide and, if you ask for it, to arrange a consultation call-back (POPIA). No marketing lists, never shared with a third party.

Cluster & body-corporate notes

The window has to work from inside and read right from outside.

A good share of Hazelwood's newer stock sits inside boutique complexes with a body corporate that cares how the building reads from the shared street. That draws a clean line through this guide. Blinds fitted inside the room — rollers, day & night, venetians, cellular — touch neither the structure nor the street face, so they sit well clear of any scheme rule. Anything mounted outside the glass — external venetians, roller shutters, a fixed awning — changes the elevation the whole complex shares, and that's usually the trustees' business.

The tidy answer and the compliant one tend to be the same: motorised, cassette-hidden hardware reads as clean from the street because nothing hangs visibly, which is what most schemes are asking for. We fit blinds, not your body corporate, so we won't tell you what your trustees will approve — but tell us the rules up front and we'll spec to them, and design an interior option strong enough to stand on its own either way.

Before anything gets ordered

Five things only a tape measure at the window can settle.

The honest limit of any guide, ours included. Everything above narrows the field; these five decide it — which is the whole reason the free measure exists.

  1. True reveal depth, and whether the opening is square

    Reveal depth decides whether an inside mount is even possible, which decides how much light escapes past a blockout down each edge. Big apartment openings and older-home windows are rarely dead square — we measure in three places, never one.

  2. How exposed that glass really is above the canopy

    The difference between a shaded ground-floor window and an unfiltered top-floor one is the whole spec, and no floor plan shows it. We look at what the trees and the building actually throw across the glass at the hour that matters.

  3. What the frame is, and what it can carry

    Aluminium apartment frames, older timber and steel each take a fixing differently, and a slim contemporary frame sometimes can't carry an inside mount at all — then we mount to the surrounding structure instead, but only once we've seen it in the flesh.

  4. Where the power for a motor can run

    Motorising a high window is simple in principle and fiddly in practice: the cable has to arrive without chasing a finished wall. Sometimes there's a ceiling void; sometimes the honest answer is a battery motor. We settle it on site, not by guessing.

  5. What the body corporate will and won't allow outside

    Anything on the outside of the glass is the trustees' business, and every scheme is different. We'd rather confirm what's permitted before we quote an external product than have you unpick it later.

Two ways forward

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Open the window list

We take five or six measure appointments a week across Hazelwood and the suburbs around it, so the diary tends to fill early — booking ahead helps if you need a particular day.

The close

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One short form. Add rough window sizes underneath if you'd like a budget range as well — that part is entirely optional, and never a substitute for the free measure.

What you're interested in (tick anything from the guide)
Optional: add rough window sizes for a budget range

Hazelwood Blinds — window list

Walk the house, fill this in roughly, then type it back into the form on the guide page. Measure the widest width and the longest drop of each opening. If you'd rather not measure at all, the free expert measure does it for you.

Rough is genuinely fine — a tape across the outside of the frame is enough. We'll send a budget range by the next working day. If measuring isn't your thing, skip this entirely: the free measure gives you exact per-window pricing anyway.

Your window list — room, width, drop, mount and product for each window
RoomWidth (mm)Drop (mm)Inside or outside the revealProductRemove

Nothing on the list yet — it's entirely optional.

We use these details only to arrange your consultation call-back and, if you've added sizes, to send your budget range (POPIA). No marketing lists, never shared with a third party.

Sources

Where the numbers on this page come from.

Every climate, sun-path and suburb figure above is taken from the following. Where a figure was disputed or unverifiable, we left it out rather than round it into a sentence.

Reading this from a neighbouring window? The same sun-path reasoning applies across Brooklyn, Menlo Park, Lynnwood and Groenkloof — the housing stock and the exposure are what change.