Three neighbourhoods under one name, one settled family character

One suburb name, three distinct pockets

Highbury is really three neighbourhoods sharing a name — Highbury Park, Stellendale and the Highbury core — each with its own street character but the same underlying story: settled, freestanding family homes on stands that were generous by the standards of when they were built, filled in over the decades with extensions, new roofs and modernised kitchens rather than knocked down and rebuilt. It's the kind of suburb where a consultant is as likely to be measuring a room that's been re-plastered twice as one that's original to the 1980s.

How we specify for Highbury

That mix of original and renovated rooms is the main thing we plan around — a newly extended lounge often has fresh, true-square openings that take a standard bracket easily, while the original part of the house next door may have a frame that's shifted slightly over the decades and needs a face-fixed cassette instead of a recessed track. Orientation is genuinely mixed street to street here, so we confirm which way each window faces rather than assume, and a west-facing original lounge catching Kuils River's low winter sun — down around 33° at midday through June — is a strong candidate for a blockout or double roller. The September-to-May south-easter applies here as everywhere else in Kuils River: any awning over a Highbury patio gets a wind sensor specified as standard.