Patio Awnings and Sail Shades

[QuantumWeatherButterfly]

Our garden is small, south-facing, and a lovely little suntrap - great in the evening but it absolutely bakes during the day.

Last year we said we would look at some sort of shading solution, and yet here we are with spring approaching and no decisions made.

We definitely don't have room for a big enough parasol, so I've been looking at either awnings or sail shades.

Can anyone with a sail shade tell me - how easy are they to put up and down? I wouldn't want to leave it up all the time, so if it isn't simple to string up when we need it, that might rule it out.

Likewise, if you have an awning - where did you get it and how much did it cost? Would you recommend? And if you have a manual one, how easy is it to wind in and out?

You can actually buy wall mount parasols which are literally half a parasol.

I used to have an electric awning at my last propety, unfortunately I have no recollection of where it came from or how much. We found it really useful, but you need to remember to wind it in quickly if it gets windy or starts to rain.

We had a sail shade that used to stay up all summer. It took a few minutes to take down, enough that I wouldn’t want to do it daily.
Can you not plan it so that it can stay up? Maybe to leave some sun in your garden?

We have an Ikea shade sail - we've had 3 over the past 12ish years. Our home is a Victorian terrace with an iron external staircase at the back from when it was two flats. This makes it easy to attach one of the fixing points up high but would be more fiddly if we didn't have a staircase there! I think the shade sail cost about £20 so it's a lot cheaper than many options. We have ended up replacing old ones because they eventually stretch and tear but we do leave ours out from about April until September.

Unfortunately we really couldn’t leave it up all summer - the garden really just is a little courtyard and it would just totally dominate the whole space. I suspect an awning is the way to go.

The problem with a shade sail is that as a pp said you will need a high point away from the house to attach it to - like a post. which will be there all the time even when you take the sail down.

We have an electric awning, it’s fab but it was jolly expensive!! There are cheaper models though especially if you don’t need it to be very big.

Thanks, minipie - we have a couple of potential higher anchor points (posts etc), but as much as I love the look (we’d totally forget we weren’t in Ibiza, right? Right???) I think you’re right, an awning is more practical.

Fortunately, DH can’t resist a gadget, so perhaps it won’t be too hard of a sell. Hmm.

We had a big post which slotted into a hole for the third corner.
And I think the second was fence rather than house.
So don’t discount it if you don’t have all the anchor points at present.

My friend had something like this installed in the courtyard garden of their old house - they loved it: electric pergola