Made to measure for Senderwood's garden homes.

Senderwood

Big stands, old trees, and a light problem nobody expects.

Senderwood sits immediately south of Bedfordview proper — an established, unhurried stretch of larger stands, mature gardens and homes that have been added to over decades rather than built in one go. It is one of the easier suburbs in this corner of the East Rand to measure well, because almost nothing about the glazing is standard.

Homes here

The typical Senderwood house is a generous single or double-storey on a big plot, with rooms that were sized before open-plan became the default. Windows tend to be wider than they are tall, often set in deep face-brick reveals, and frequently a mix — a steel-framed original in one room, an aluminium replacement in the next, a sliding stack added when the patio was enclosed. That mix is exactly why we measure every opening individually instead of quoting a house by room count.

The mature-garden trap

Established trees do a lot of shading work at ground level, which is why Senderwood living rooms often feel comfortable and the upstairs bedrooms do not. Anything above the canopy line takes the full afternoon sun with nothing in front of it, so upper floors regularly need a heavier specification than the rooms below them — a lower-openness sunscreen, a cellular blind for the heat, or an external venetian if the elevation is genuinely punishing. It is the single most common surprise on a Senderwood measure.

Products that suit Senderwood

For the main living rooms, timber venetians sit well against face brick and older proportions, and the tilt lets you keep the garden view while dropping the glare. Bedrooms and upstairs rooms usually take a double roller — sunscreen by day, blockout at night — and cellular blinds are worth costing where a room bakes. The deep patios most of these houses have are natural folding-arm awning territory, with a zip screen down one open side if wind comes through the garden. Roller shutters are on the list too, purely as external sun and heat control on the hardest-hit elevation: shading shutters, not security-rated shutters.