Why does Crawford’s have 140 years of relevance?

Crawford’s started in Cape Town in 1885. That makes them older than the Union of South Africa. They have manufactured through every era of this country’s history – and they are still making blinds in their own factory, with their own fabric technology, on the same continent where the blinds will be installed.

That matters here. South Africa’s climate – extreme UV, coastal humidity, summer heat that can hold 40 degrees for weeks – destroys imported fabrics that were designed for European conditions. Crawford’s developed their core technologies specifically for this climate. The Kleenscreen antimicrobial treatment was not an afterthought for marketing purposes. It was a direct response to what happens inside a coastal bedroom blind over three wet seasons.

Custom Blinds chose Shademaster® for the same reason we chose every product in our range: it survives the Garden Route, and our customers do not have to think about it again.

What does the Shademaster® range include?

The range is wider than most homeowners expect from a single manufacturer. Crawford’s makes everything in-house, which means the quality control is consistent from the fabric roll to the finished blind.

Roller blinds are the core of the range and come in three configurations: sheer (light-filtering with daytime privacy), blockout (full light elimination for bedrooms and media rooms), and dual – a double-roller system that runs both a sheer and a blockout on a single headrail, allowing you to shift between filtered light and full darkness without a second set of tracks.

Smart Screen is Shademaster®’s UV-filtering fabric engineered specifically for coastal exposure. It cuts glare and radiant heat while keeping the view through the window – meaningful on a property facing the Knysna Lagoon or the Plett beach break.

Kleenscreen is the blockout fabric with Sanitized® antimicrobial treatment. In bathrooms, kitchens, and coastal bedrooms where humidity sits high through winter, standard blockout fabrics develop mould at the seams within two seasons. Kleenscreen is engineered to resist that.

Venetian blinds in the Shademaster® range come in solid basswood and aluminium. The wood venetians are a natural fit for the timber-framed homes throughout Knysna, Wilderness, and the Heads. The aluminium range suits modern coastal builds and works in rooms that face direct spray or condensation.

Vertical blinds cover large glass doors and floor-to-ceiling glazing – common in the open-plan beach house architecture of the Garden Route. The vertical louvre system allows precise light direction control without blocking airflow.

Motorisation is available across the Shademaster® roller blind range via Somfy and Louvolite One Touch systems. Somfy’s RTS and io-homecontrol protocols integrate with most smart home platforms. Louvolite’s One Touch system is simple enough for holiday homes and rental properties where guests should not have to navigate a manual chain.

Why does a Garden Route home need coastal-grade fabrics?

The Garden Route sits between the Outeniqua Mountains and the Indian Ocean. That geography creates a specific set of conditions that most window coverings from inland manufacturers or import catalogues were not designed for.

UV intensity at this latitude is high year-round. Summer temperatures in George and Mossel Bay hold above 35 degrees for weeks. Knysna and Plett receive more rainfall than the rest of the Western Cape, and the humidity that follows a winter system can sit inside a house for days. Salt air moves through open windows and settles on every surface, including blind fabric, tracks, and headrails.

Standard imported fabrics bleach at the fold lines, develop mould at the hem, and lose their structural integrity at the seams within two to three seasons under these conditions. Crawford’s fabrics are developed and tested in South Africa, for South African conditions. That is not a marketing claim – it is 140 years of manufacturing decisions informed by exactly this climate.

For homes on the Knysna Heads, facing the Plett estuary, or catching the Wilderness beach wind: the fabric choice matters more than the colour. Get the fabric right, and the blind lasts. Get it wrong, and you are replacing it in season three.