Sun Shade, Shaded Nation

Summer is coming, with its promise of barbecues, balmy evenings and long Saturday afternoons.  There’s nothing quite like relaxing in the garden with a paper, or having a quiet breakfast for two overlooking the water feature: until it starts raining, or the beech trees shed leaves in the teacups.  With a sun shade, a person can be as protected outside as they are indoors.  A sun shade makes the most of any part of a garden, turning it into a multi-purpose outside “room”.

The obvious function of a sun shade:  to keep the sun off fragile skins and heads.  Installing a sun shade means that the British summer, should it occur for once, can be enjoyed in safety – with the benefits of fresh air and sunshine tempered by the cooling protection of a sail.  And if the British summer doesn’t deliver – the sun shade becomes the saviour of every wetted barbecue and showered-on book in the land.  Under a sun shade, even a little summer rainfall can be a very pleasant thing:  imagine sitting in a deckchair, favourite novel in hand, while a balmy drizzle patters lazily against the fabric above.

Probably the most impressive use of a sun shade, certainly in the eyes of potential houseguests, is as a roof for an outdoor dining room.  A well-designed and installed sun shade hung with lanterns can make a garden dinner party feel really unique:  as though one’s host has moved a whole dinner party, room and all, out into the warmth and inviting sounds of the night.

The modern sun shade comes in as many shapes, sizes and configurations as there are places to put them.  Generally speaking, the sun shade is made of a material called “shade cloth”; cut either triangularly or as a rectangular awning.  Shade cloth is rather like a sail in thickness and texture:  but cooling and lightweight.  A good sun shade can repel as much as 98% of the sun’s harmful UV rays and can be manufactured bespoke, to any design or size.

A sun shade looks good in its own right, too.  A large sun shade, made of overlapping geometric shapes of shade cloth, looks like nothing so much as a modernist sculpture. A smaller sun shade adds a touch of definition to an outdoor space, a brief white outline under which a seat reclines in a perfectly cool spot.

With the advent of summer, the urge of all right-thinking people is to get outside and make the most of things.  A sun shade, with its combination of good looks, protection and airy enclosure, means they really can.