Blinds and exterior shading specified for Waterkloof Ridge view glass — the view stays, the glare doesn't.

Waterkloof Ridge is built along a crest, and almost every plan up here is turned the same way — outward, north and west, over the city bowl and the koppies. That orientation is the reason people buy on the ridge. It is also the reason the glass needs a plan.

South of the equator the sun sits in the north, so a north-facing wall of glass takes light all day: welcome in a Pretoria winter, and usually manageable in summer when the sun is high and an overhang does half the work. The elevation that actually hurts is west. Late-afternoon sun arrives low, straight through the glass at eye level, at exactly the hour the room is being used. No interior fabric fixes that as well as stopping the sun outside the glass does.

Then there is the exposure. Up on the crest there is very little between a window and the weather, and a highveld summer storm arrives from the west with almost no warning. Anything mounted outside — an awning, an exterior blind, a zip screen — earns its wind sensor on the first bad afternoon.

The stands add their own complication. Terraced sites give you split levels, double-volume lounges and stairwell voids, which means a good proportion of the glass in a ridge home is simply out of arm's reach. Motorisation stops being a nice-to-have there and becomes the only sensible way to operate it.

Lower down toward Waterkloof itself the picture changes again: mature jacaranda streets, older stands, smaller and more conventional windows, and a steady run of renovations opening the back of those houses up entirely. Same method, different answer — which is the whole point of measuring before quoting.