Daytime privacy and night-time privacy are two separate problems, and most privacy complaints come from treating them as one. A sunscreen blind that keeps people from seeing in during the day becomes see-through the moment you turn the lights on inside.
Why a sunscreen blind reverses after dark
Privacy through any open-weave fabric depends on which side is brighter. During the day the outside is brighter than your lounge room, so someone on the footpath sees the fabric while you see straight out through it. That is the whole trick.
After sunset it flips. Your lit room is now the brighter side, so the view works in the other direction and passers-by can see shapes and movement inside. Nothing has failed. The physics simply changed when the sun went down.
Which is why a front room facing the street usually needs two fabrics, or a fabric plus a curtain, rather than one clever compromise.
What openness factor really buys you
Sunscreen roller blinds are rated by openness factor, which is the percentage of the fabric made up of holes in the weave. The range runs from about 1% up to 10%.
A 1% or 3% fabric is tight. Daytime privacy is good, glare control is good, and you can still read the numberplate of a car across the road. A 5% is a middle ground. A 10% is open enough that the view is excellent and the daytime privacy is noticeably weaker, particularly on a light-coloured fabric.
Colour matters as much as the number. A dark charcoal 5% gives better privacy and a clearer view out than a white 5%, because light bounces off the pale fibres and hazes the fabric. Most people are surprised by that, and it is worth seeing the two side by side before you choose.
Sheer fabrics, and where they work
Sheers soften a room and give you a little daytime screening without shutting out the light. Sheer roller blinds and sheer curtains both do this well in a lounge or a dining room where the window is not directly onto a footpath.
Do not ask a sheer to do a blockout’s job. It will not hide you at night and it will not darken a bedroom. Where people get the best result is running a sheer and a blockout together, either as a double roller on one bracket or as a sheer curtain over a roller blind.
A double roller is the tidier version of that. One set of brackets, two fabrics, sheer or sunscreen on the back roller and blockout on the front, so you change the room in one movement.
Shutters and venetians let you keep the light
Adjustable louvres solve a problem that rollers cannot. With plantation shutters or venetian blinds you can tilt the slats upward, which sends light onto the ceiling while blocking the sightline from someone standing at street level.
That is the answer for a front room where you want daylight and you do not want to be watched. Tilt up for privacy with light, tilt closed for full privacy, open flat for the view.
Shutters do it with more substance and better light control, and they hold their position without needing to be reset. Aluminium and PVC venetians are the practical option in wet rooms, because they shrug off moisture.
Bathrooms, ensuites and ground-floor windows
These are the rooms where privacy is not negotiable, and the ones where people most often accept a poor result. A blockout blind in a bathroom works, but it means showering in the dark.
Better options are a shutter you can tilt, or an obscured or frosted glass panel with a blind for night-time. If the window is high and small, a blind that only ever sits partly down is often all it needs.
Ground-floor bedrooms facing a side path need proper attention, because the sightline is close and at eye level. A blockout on an outside mount with about 150mm of overlap past the glass leaves no gap for anyone to see through at the edges.
Closing the gaps
The fabric is rarely the weak point. The edges are. An inside-mounted blind must be cut narrower than the reveal so it can run, which leaves a thin gap down each side, and at night that gap is a clear line of sight into a lit room.
Mounting outside the reveal with overlap fixes it. So does a cassette or a pelmet at the top, which stops anyone looking down past the roll from an upstairs window next door. On a roller in a reveal, side channels close the gap tightly at the cost of visible hardware.
Check it at night rather than in the middle of the day. Turn the lights on inside, walk out to the footpath and look back. You will see exactly where the gaps are in about ten seconds.
If there is a window in your house that bothers you, book a free measure and quote. We will stand in the room, work out where the sightlines actually come from, and recommend the fabric and mount that close them off.
Common questions
Can people see through my blinds at night?
Through a sunscreen or sheer fabric, yes. Open-weave fabrics only give privacy when the outside is brighter than the room, so once your lights are on the view reverses. A blockout fabric or a lined curtain is what you need after dark.
What openness factor gives the best privacy?
The lower the number, the tighter the weave and the better the daytime privacy, so a 1% or 3% fabric outperforms a 10%. Darker colours also screen better than pale ones at the same openness, because light reflects off light-coloured fibres.
What is the best privacy option for a bathroom?
A shutter you can tilt, or obscured glass with a blind for night-time. Tilting the louvres upward gives you daylight without a sightline into the room. A plain blockout blind gives privacy but leaves you showering in the dark.