Best blinds for a north-facing living room in Tauranga
For north-facing living rooms, sunscreen roller blinds or adjustable-louvre shutters work best - they cut glare and heat while still letting you keep the view and natural light, which a heavy blockout blind can't do.
As the mornings start warming up again, I'm getting more calls from people about their north-facing lounges - the rooms that are brilliant for light most of the year, but turn into a hot box the moment the sun really gets going. If that's a room in your house, you're not alone, and it's one of the most common briefs I get across Tauranga and the wider Bay of Plenty - I'm seeing the same thing in a lot of the newer Waikato builds too, especially the ones with big open-plan glass.
The trick with a north-facing living room is that you don't want to lose the light and the view - that's usually the whole reason people love the room in the first place. You just want control over it.
Sunscreen roller blinds are a great option here. The fabric filters direct sun and glare while still letting diffused light through, so the room doesn't go dark, it just goes comfortable. You keep the outlook, lose the squint.
Shutters with adjustable louvres give you even more control. You can tilt the blades to bounce light onto the ceiling instead of straight into the room, which cuts glare and heat without shutting the space off. On a still, sunny afternoon, that small adjustment is the difference between a room you want to sit in and one you avoid until evening.
Motorised options are worth considering too if the window is large or hard to reach - a lot of open-plan living areas in newer Tauranga builds have big sliders or high glass that isn't practical to adjust by hand several times a day.
What I'd avoid for a north-facing lounge is a heavy blockout blind as your only option - it solves the heat and glare problem by shutting the room down completely, which usually isn't what people actually want from their main living space.
I did a job on Marine Parade last year where the owners had exactly this issue - beautiful sea-facing lounge, but unusable by early afternoon most days. Bifolding shutters gave them full control without losing an inch of that view.
If you've got a room you love in the morning and avoid by 2pm, it's worth having a chat before summer really sets in.
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