Stop The Heat Outside The Glass
Folding arm awnings for the alfresco with no roof, and fixed awnings for the window that cooks from ten in the morning. Australian made, measured at your place, and fitted right along the Gold Coast.
Why Lusso, Gold Coast
Buy The Awning The Wall Can Hold
A folding arm awning is the better-looking product, and over a sheltered courtyard it is the right one. On an exposed elevation on this coast it is also the one that ages fastest, and you should hear that before you order rather than after.
The range
Local conditions
The Wind Here Keeps Office Hours
Inland, an awning’s enemy is the storm — one bad afternoon a summer, arriving faster than anyone gets home. On this coast the problem is duller and far more constant. The Gold Coast Seaway station records a mean 3pm wind of 23.3 km/h, and it never drops below 19 km/h even in the middle of winter. That is not weather. That is a schedule.
Which matters, because an awning is rated for wind the way a ladder is rated for weight. Ratings are usually quoted on the Beaufort scale, where 6 means 39 to 49 km/h. An ordinary Gold Coast afternoon runs at about half that — comfortably inside the rating — and then does it again tomorrow, and every afternoon through to March. Nothing fails. Things fatigue. The fabric still looks new while the arm joints, the springs and the fixings quietly do all the ageing, and salt in the air gets into every one of them.
So the real question here is not which awning looks best in a brochure. It is whether the wall you are putting it on faces the water or shelters from it, and shade is worth more outside the glass than in — Your Home, the Australian Government’s design guide, puts external shading well ahead of internal for stopping summer heat. We go further into what this coast does to outdoor fabric on our Gold Coast outdoor blinds page, and into what the wind does to a loose one in why blinds bang in the wind.
An awning that has to be wound in every afternoon is not shade. It is a chore with a warranty.
The detail that matters
Three Things That Decide It
Most awning pages talk about the fabric. On the Gold Coast the fabric is rarely what goes first — the wind rating, the moving parts and the fixing are, in that order.
Awning wind ratings are usually quoted on the Beaufort scale, and the conversion is the useful part: Beaufort 6 is 39 to 49 km/h. Hold that against a mean 3pm wind of 23.3 km/h and you can see where an ordinary afternoon sits, and how little headroom is left for the gust front that arrives before a storm does. Ask any supplier what their rating is, and whether it describes the arm or the fabric.
A fixed awning has nothing that moves. A folding arm has arms, springs, pivots and a drive, and salt-laden air finds all of them within a few summers of a beachside elevation. That is not an argument against folding arms. It is an argument for putting one where it is sheltered and specifying a fixed awning where it is not — which is usually the cheaper of the two.
An awning has no legs, so everything it does in a breeze goes back into two brackets and whatever they are bolted to. We check the structure at the measure rather than on installation day, because finding out then is how a job stops halfway. The cantilever physics is worked through on our Brisbane awnings page if you want the detail, and the track-guided alternative on our ZipScreen page.
Gold Coast clients
Still Going After Fourteen Years
Anything bolted to the outside of a house on this coast gets tested by salt and wind inside the first summer. These are three of the 85 reviews on file.
Thank you for your great service and help with my electric blinds, after the cyclone upset the settings.
Alan Thies
We have been very happy that we chose Lusso blinds right through our beachside unit. The quality is excellent and perfect for the climate and the salt air. On the rare occasion that we have needed a repair it has been done…
Anne-Marie Malouf
Very happy with all my Lusso blinds. We have had them 14 years and not a problem at all. When we recently had to repair our outdoor blind, they were swift and very efficient in fixing and it is working perfectly again. Would highly recommend this company for all your window covering needs.
Leanne Goodman
Where they go
Where An Awning Earns Its Keep
A folding arm, because nothing else covers an open space without putting posts in the middle of it. This is the job the product was designed for and where it is worth the money.
QuoteA fixed window awning. Shade does more outside the glass than in, before the heat is in the room — and a fixed awning has nothing to wind in, which on a window you never think about is the entire point.
QuoteFixed rather than folding on anything that takes the breeze head-on. It is the cheaper product and it will outlast the better-looking one in that position, so that is what we will quote you.
QuoteUsually a drop rather than a projection, and approved by the body corporate before anything is ordered. Start the approval early — it delays these jobs far more often than the making does.
QuoteSheltered on three sides, so a folding arm earns its keep and most of the wind argument above goes away. This is where the good-looking option is also the sensible one.
QuoteHow it works
Three steps, quote in 48 hours
We come to you anywhere on the Gold Coast. Detailed quote within 24 to 48 hours, valid for 30 days — no deposit to get a price.
We need the dimensions and the aspect of the room before we can quote.
Itemised component by component, and valid for 30 days.
Nothing starts until you are comfortable with the selections.
Where we work
Byron Bay To Brisbane
From Byron Bay to Brisbane, across the whole Gold Coast and inland to the hinterland. If you're anywhere on that stretch, we'll come to you.
Before you ask
More than people expect, and less than a brochure implies. Ratings are usually quoted on the Beaufort scale, where 6 means 39 to 49 km/h, and the Gold Coast Seaway records a mean 3pm wind of 23.3 km/h — so an ordinary afternoon sits at roughly half the rating. A gust front ahead of a storm does not, and the honest answer is that a folding arm should be wound in before the weather rather than during it. If the awning is somewhere you cannot get to quickly, that is a genuine argument for a motor with a wind sensor, and it is a decision for the quote.
No, and using one as a roof is how they get wrecked. Awning fabric is water-resistant and at pitch it will shed a light shower. What it will not do is carry pooled water, which is far heavier than it looks once it settles into a sag. Wind it in for anything more than passing rain. If you want cover you can leave out in weather, you want a roof, not an awning.
More height than most people allow for, because an awning runs on a pitch — the front bar always finishes lower than the fixing point. A steeper pitch sheds water better and drops that front bar further, so clearance at full projection is a trade-off against how well it handles rain. That is why we measure the height above the opening and the fall of the ground beneath it, not just the width. The number for your opening comes off the measure.
There is no honest figure before a measure, and a price off a website is a guess about your wall. Four things move it: the span, the fabric, whether it is crank-operated or motorised, and what the brackets are fixing into — masonry is a different job from timber. You get an itemised quote within 24 to 48 hours of the measure, component by component, valid for 30 days.
Straight-drop and fixed awnings generally run with our outdoor blind range, which is two to three weeks from check-measure. Folding arm systems vary with the span and the drive, so the date goes on your quote rather than being guessed at here. Motorisation adds about a week, more if power has to be run to the opening.
All of them, and past them. We work from Byron Bay to Brisbane — Surfers Paradise, Broadbeach, Burleigh Heads, Palm Beach, Robina, Coolangatta, Southport, Main Beach, Mermaid Beach, Hope Island, Currumbin, Nerang, Helensvale, Runaway Bay, Paradise Point and Bundall — and we travel nationwide for larger projects. If you are not sure, call (07) 5528 4006 and we will tell you straight away.
Get in touch
Free measure & quote, Gold Coast wide
Tell us which rooms and we'll come to you with the fabric range, measure properly, and tell you honestly which windows need side tracks and which don't.
