Carport shade sails · SydneyShade for the car, space for the driveway.
A custom sail can cover the parking space while leaving room for doors, gates and the route to your house.
Carport shade sails
Start with the vehicle and its route.
Measure the parking space with the car doors open. Add the gate swing, and the walk from the boot to the front door with your hands full. Those everyday movements are what decide between a sail on corner posts, a fixing back to the house, and a cantilever reaching in from one side.
We make carport sails for driveways all over Sydney, including taller cover for a boat or a caravan. The site measure settles the anchors, the clearances and the road frontage before the design is fixed. Every structure is engineered to the NSW wind codes, with certification available on request.
- Room for open car doors and a gate that swings.
- Shade cloth, or waterproof cover if the car has to stay dry.
- House fixings checked before anybody counts on them.
Selected work
Driveways and carparks.
Sails we have made and installed over vehicles, from a home driveway to the rooftop carpark at Mascot.
How it goes together
What decides the design.
Sail or cantilever?
A conventional sail wants an anchor at each corner. A cantilever carries the cover from one side, which helps where a post would otherwise land in the middle of the driveway. Compare where the footings can go as well as how the roof will look from the street.
Check the lowest point
Measure the tallest thing you park, roof box and aerial included. Clearance has to work the whole way along the driveway, and under the lowest corner of a sail once it is pulled tight.
Confirm the house connection
A roof edge is a tempting anchor. The load still has to land in structure that has been checked and can carry it, and plenty of eaves cannot. Where that is the case, the design goes back to independent posts.
Decide what the cover must do
Shade cloth cuts the sun and lets air and rain through the weave. A waterproof membrane runs the rain off to a low corner, so the pitch and the place the water lands get planned around your entry and the driveway.
See the colour from the street
Hold samples against the brickwork and the roof, outside, in daylight. A colour name tells you very little on its own. Look at the glare and how much light comes through, then check the rating for the exact fabric you choose.
Good to know
Carport sails, answered.
Will a sail protect my car from hail?+
Do not read a shade rating as hail cover. They are different tests and a shade figure says nothing about impact. If hail is what worries you, tell us, and we will find a product with tested performance and be straight with you about where it stops.
Can you cover an SUV, boat or caravan?+
Yes, where the site gives us the height. Send the overall dimensions with anything carried on the roof, plus a photo of the approach. Extra height changes the structure underneath it, and it can change the planning checks too.
Do I need council approval for a carport sail?+
In our experience of ordinary home enquiries, almost never. What decides it is the size of the sail, its height, where it sits on the block and the land it stands on, and a sail out the front near the street gets a closer look than one in the back yard. Our NSW council approval guide has the rules to check before you order.
Can you use my existing posts?+
Only once we have looked at their condition, their footings and their connections against the sail you want. Going up in size, or across from cloth to PVC, changes what those posts are being asked to carry.
Who we are, and how a job runs from the first visit to the last tension.
Read next
Keep going.
Waterproof shade sails · Sydney
Waterproof PVC shade sails for Sydney homes and businesses, tensioned with fall so the rain runs off the low corner. Made at our Rydalmere factory.
Shade sail repairs · Sydney
Shade sail repairs across Sydney: re-tensioning, cleaning, restitched seams and replacement skins on the posts you already have. Any brand, any installer.
Council approval · NSW shade sails
Almost never, for an ordinary home sail. What decides it is the size, the height, where it sits on the block and the land, with links to the NSW rules.
Ready to get the car under cover?
Book a free measure and quote. Tell us what you park and how the driveway gets used.