Roller blinds built for the light bouncing off the Atlantic

Sunscreen does the daily work

On a stand that faces west or south-west across open water, a fine sunscreen mesh — usually 3–5% openness — is the roller most Clifton living rooms end up drawing every afternoon. It keeps the view of the boulders and the beach below while cutting the low, hard late-afternoon sun and the second dose of glare bounced straight back up off the water. Lower percentages block more heat and glare at the cost of a softer view; most sea-facing lounges land at 3–5%.

Blockout, and the double-roller answer for bedrooms

Bedrooms want the opposite problem solved — full dark, regardless of what the evening light off the water is doing. A single blockout roller does that on its own. A double roller (day/night) pairs a blockout fabric with a sunscreen on the same bracket, so the room gets a filtered sea view by day and total privacy at night without swapping blinds. Blockout fabric also works as a genuine thermal layer, taking the edge off both the summer heat load and a cold winter night.

Fitted for salt air, not just for the window

Chain and cord tensioners are fitted as standard on anything corded. Near an open sliding door or an exposed deck we lean towards motorised operation and a sealed cassette rather than an open bracket, because that's what actually survives the air off the water, and a cliff-edge balcony in Bantry Bay counts as an exposed deck for this purpose. Wide spans — the norm on Clifton's glass walls — either split with a central join line or run as motorised linked blinds so there's no single chain trying to control four metres of fabric. Aspect matters more than address when the mesh is chosen. A north-facing Fresnaye room takes its sun low and in winter rather than square-on off the water, so the openness a sea-facing Clifton lounge lands on is seldom the right one there.