Local Shutter InstallersComparisons · Comparison
Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter
Updated
Somfy is the motor, usually in someone else's shutter. Bubendorff sells the shutter and the solar drive as one product.
What you are actually choosing
Pick Bubendorff when you want that single maker and a dealer who knows it. Pick a Somfy-driven curtain when your fitter already builds a shutter you have seen on a nearby house and will warrant the curtain themselves.
A roller, a screen, a venetian and a plantation panel are four answers.
An illustration, not a winner
The worked opening for Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter is 4.2 m wide by 2.1 m high, 8.82 square metres of glass. This figure puts 470 watts per square metre on the pane and uses a g-value of 0.76, about 3151 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 315 watts and keeps about 2836 watts out. That is a noon figure for comparison. An internal blind does not get the same reduction. For Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter, use the noon figure to compare two openings on the same house, then let a measured survey replace the figure.
Fitted illustration for Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter in Bath: £6,251 at September 2026 prices, for this 4.2 by 2.1 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 Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter: glass at 2.6 W/m2K, 8.82 square metres, a 12 degree inside-outside gap and eight night hours. The bare pane is about 2.20 kWh a night on that crude sum. A closed shutter cutting about 30 percent of the flow leaves 1.54 kWh and saves about 0.66 kWh a night, only while it is down. Open it when you want winter sun.
A poor reason to mix them
Stop Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter if the only place for the box is a listed street front and nobody has written advice from the council. A photograph is not a manufacturing size.
If Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter 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 4.2 by 2.1 metre opening inside Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter 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 £6,251. 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 Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter, 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. Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter covers one kind of opening. The house may have three.
When I would not order yet
Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter 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 Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter 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. £6,251 illustrates Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter for a 4.2 by 2.1 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 8.82 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 Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter 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. Somfy drive or a Bubendorff shutter uses a solar motor in the example so you can see how much the motor choice moves £6,251.