The ocean view, without the sun glaring in at both ends of the day.

A south-facing coastline that still catches the sun at both ends of the day

Strand runs along the north-eastern shore of False Bay, its five kilometres of beach giving the town the longest stretch of swimmable sand on this side of the bay — regularly rated among the warmest, safest swimming water in greater Cape Town, sheltered by the bay itself and by the Hottentots-Holland range rising close behind the town. Beachfront apartment blocks line Beach Road almost the full length of it, most of them sectional title, a mix of straightforward 1970s-to-90s builds with standard aluminium sliding doors and newer, larger-glazed towers further along.

The coastline runs broadly east-west here, so nearly every beachfront unit faces south or south-south-west across the bay. On paper that sounds like the shaded side of the building. It isn't, for two months either side of December: Cape summer pushes sunrise and sunset well south of due east and west, so a south-facing wall still takes direct, low, raking sun in the first and last hour of daylight — precisely when balcony doors are open and the beach outside is busiest. The wind tells its own story: the summer south-easter reaches this corner of the bay, but the mountains behind the town take some of the sting out of it compared with the fully open Atlantic side of the peninsula; winter cold fronts bring a more direct north-westerly instead.

How we specify it: south-facing lounges and bedrooms get sunscreen or blockout roller blinds first, sized for that low dawn-and-dusk sun rather than a midday sun that barely troubles a south wall. Anything mounted outside — an awning, a zip screen, a roller shutter — gets a sealed cassette and a wind-sensor motor, because salt spray and fine airborne sand off the beach are harder on an open bracket than either is alone. And because most of this frontage is sectional title, we check body-corporate rules on external fittings at the first call — interior blinds usually don't need that sign-off, but a balcony bracket almost always does.

• Five kilometres of beach on the north-eastern shore of False Bay — among the warmest, most sheltered swimming water in greater Cape Town
• South-facing glass still catches raking sun at sunrise and sunset through Cape summer, even though it's shaded through the middle of the day
• The Hottentots-Holland range takes some sting out of the summer south-easter here versus the open Atlantic seaboard; winter fronts bring the wind from the north-west instead
• Mostly sectional title — body-corporate rules typically apply to anything fitted outside the glass line, rarely to blinds mounted inside it