Shade Sail

Shade sails can provide a visually stunning and cost-effective solution to shading issues, but they need to withstand the significant forces of wind and the weight of rain. To ensure this, the sails must:

• Be designed correctly.
• Have materials of adequate strength and durability.
• Have their components installed correctly.

Our shade sails are lovingly designed and fabricated just like a tailor would make a sports jacket for his best customer! We’ve been making sails since 2005 and we know what works and what doesn’t work, we’ve seen which fabrics last and look good for years, and from the experience of having hundreds of customers with hundreds of sails installed in all kinds of locations and through all kinds of weather, we know how to make them last.

Design

We design all our shade sails on specialist 3D form-finding computer software which optimises site configuration, sail shape, the shade pattern and fabric considerations to produce designs stable in all weather conditions and tailor-made for their locations. We make standard-size shade sails and custom-made shade sails.

Fabrics

Shade-only (mesh) fabrics: made from long-lasting, washable and serviceable knitted HDPE (high density polyethylene) to provide up to 94% shade factor, or architectural grade Serge-Ferrari Soltis PVC coated polyester mesh fabric. Manufacturers guarantee these fabrics for up to 10 years against UV-induced deterioration. Ask us about our great colour ranges!

Rain-proof (solid) fabrics: architectural PVC coated polyester from Europe with a range of colours, finish textures, coatings and translucency, or for some applications solution-dyed acrylic fabric (such as Sunbrella).

Construction

For shade cloth sails, fabric panels are sewn with Goretex Tenara thread, a spaceage expanded polymer thread guaranteed to last for 7 years. Smaller sails have double-sewn perimeter hems and reinforced corners with stainless steel rings (Type “A”). Our larger sails are built with 316 grade stainless steel perimeter-pocket cables, corner attachments and tensioning attachment fittings (Type “B”). The largest shade cloth sails, and most PVC or acrylic sails, have purpose-made steel or stainless steel corner plates with adjustable perimeter stainless steel cable tensioning (Type “C”).