Local Shutter InstallersComparisons · Comparison
A shutter or an air conditioner
Updated
Air conditioning removes heat after it has entered and costs electricity whenever it runs. A shutter reduces what enters and also serves winter nights and security.
What you are actually choosing
A baked glass extension sometimes wants both: shade so the machine is not fighting the sun directly, and cooling for the hours you need the glass clear. Buying only the air conditioner to solve a south bifold is the expensive way to keep a greenhouse.
A roller, a screen, a venetian and a plantation panel are four answers.
An illustration, not a winner
The worked opening for A shutter or an air conditioner is 1.5 m wide by 1.2 m high, 1.8 square metres of glass. This figure puts 520 watts per square metre on the pane and uses a g-value of 0.76, about 711 watts into the room if the curtain is up. An opaque external shutter, taken as stopping 90 percent of that gain while it is fully down, leaves about 71 watts and keeps about 640 watts out. That is a noon figure for comparison. An internal blind does not get the same reduction. For A shutter or an air conditioner, use the noon figure to compare two openings on the same house, then let a measured survey replace the figure.
Fitted illustration for A shutter or an air conditioner in Swansea: £1,914 at September 2026 prices, for this 1.5 by 1.2 m opening with a solar motor. The figure allows a front-mounted aluminium curtain and ordinary fixing. It does not include scaffold, a rebuilt soffit, planning drawings, or a new window. A second opening on the same visit usually costs less than the first, because the van is already there. Compare two quotes only when the slat, the box and the drive match.
Winter does not care about the brochure
Winter figure for A shutter or an air conditioner: glass at 2.6 W/m2K, 1.8 square metres, a 12 degree inside-outside gap and eight night hours. The bare pane is about 0.45 kWh a night on that crude sum. A closed shutter cutting about 30 percent of the flow leaves 0.31 kWh and saves about 0.13 kWh a night, only while it is down. Open it when you want winter sun.
A poor reason to mix them
Stop A shutter or an air conditioner if the frame cannot take a guide and the wall beside it is crumbling. A photograph is not a manufacturing size.
If A shutter or an air conditioner is really a privacy job on a bay, price internal louvres and stop forcing a cassette to do joinery.
How to use the figure
The 1.5 by 1.2 metre opening inside A shutter or an air conditioner is there so a quote has something to disagree with. If the tape gives a different size, the tape wins.
The example drive is a solar motor, and the illustration is £1,914. A belt, a wired motor and a solar motor can share a curtain and still be different jobs. Compare those lines, not a single bold total.
What the survey still has to write down
For A shutter or an air conditioner, ask where the box lands, what colour reference will be ordered, and how the curtain opens when the motor is dead. Those three answers move the job more than a rounded price.
Leave the lantern, the side light and the next elevation off the order unless they are drawn. A shutter or an air conditioner covers one kind of opening. The house may have three.
When I would not order yet
A shutter or an air conditioner should wait if the opening is an escape door with no way to raise a dead motor, or if the front is the elevation a conservation area was drawn to protect.
A photograph is not a manufacturing size. Two quotes for A shutter or an air conditioner only compare when the slat, the box and the drive are the same kind of thing.
Questions worth asking the fitter
Is the price on this page a quote?
No. £1,914 illustrates A shutter or an air conditioner for a 1.5 by 1.2 metre opening with a solar motor, at September 2026 rates. Your survey replaces it.
Does the shutter cover every pane?
It covers the opening it is built for. Here that example is 1.8 square metres. A roof lantern, a side light or the next elevation is another line.
What if planning is unclear?
Do not pay the factory for A shutter or an air conditioner until a listed building, a conservation front, a flat or a shopfront has a written answer. Ordinary rear walls on houses are sometimes simpler.
What should two quotes share?
The same openings, the same slat type, and the same drive. A shutter or an air conditioner uses a solar motor in the example so you can see how much the motor choice moves £1,914.