Latitude Fence Studio · Horizontal-slat privacy screens · Vantage Hill & Port Arden · Since 2017
Privacy, drawn in horizontal lines.
Latitude designs and builds horizontal slat fences — cedar on steel, hardwood-look composite, painted aluminum — with a 12 mm shadow gap between every board, stainless clips instead of face screws, and posts set to the frost line the county publishes. The screen the architects put in their own photographs.
Services & rates
The rate sheet, installed
Per running foot, installed — the steel subframe, the hidden clips and the 12 mm shadow gap are already inside every number. Posts go to the published frost line even where the inspector would accept less, because a slat screen shows every millimetre it moves.
Horizontal cedar on steel, 6 ftfrom $64/ln ft
2×6 boards, powder-coated subframe
Hardwood-look slat screen, 6 ftfrom $78/ln ft
ipe-tone composite, 12 mm reveal
Painted aluminum slat, 5 ftfrom $86/ln ft
any RAL colour, marine-grade coat
Louvre & brise-soleil screenfrom $94/ln ft
angled blades, sightline-proof
Flush cedar gate, 4 ftfrom $2,450
hidden frame, hydraulic hinge
Custom RAL powder-coat+$6/ln ft
sample pot mailed before we mix
Why our screens read flat
The shadow gap is the whole secret.
Every board is fastened from behind with a 316 stainless clip, set off the subframe by a 12 mm spacer gauge. The gap gives the wood somewhere to swell, gives the wind somewhere to bleed through instead of pushing, and gives the eye a shadow line that keeps ninety feet of screen reading flat from any angle. A face-screwed board has none of that — which is why you can spot one from the street.
A vertical fence says stay out. A horizontal one says look at this.
What we do
Three screens, one grammar
Cedar on steel — the workhorse
Kiln-dried 2×6 western red, clipped from behind so no screw head ever weathers, riding a galvanized subframe that stays straight when the ground does not. Oiled at handover, from $64 a foot — the screen that silvers if you leave it alone and takes stain for a decade if you don’t.
Hardwood-look slat — the low-Saturday line
Composite slat in ipe tones that keeps its 12 mm reveal because the boards never move, washed once a season and never touched again. It runs about twenty percent more per foot than cedar and asks for nothing back; cedar costs less and asks for one oiling day every second spring. We quote both on the same drawing — the arithmetic is yours, not ours.
Louvre & brise-soleil — the architecture
Angled blades set to kill the sightline from the street while the evening light comes through at its own angle — the screen for gardens that face west and neighbours who face you. Drawn per window, per parcel, per grumpy committee, and priced off the same site visit as everything else we build.
Vantage Hill · Port Arden · 2024–2026
Slat lines from the book
Six screens photographed a season or more after handover — long enough for a bad gap to have moved. Ask at the studio visit and we will walk you past one on the coast road.
How it goes
Studio visit to shadow gap
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Day 1
The studio visit
Forty minutes on the parcel with a tape, a sightline camera and the survey. We photograph your screen from the street — the only angle that matters — and leave you a budget band, free, whoever builds the line.
Week 1
Shop drawings
Every board drawn: lengths, clips, gap, gate and subframe on one sheet you could hand any builder. One fixed price rides on the drawing, already carrying the slope, the access and the frost.
Set day
Posts & subframe
Posts augered to the county frost line — 42 inches here — in concrete, subframe shimmed level between them. The steel is the part that keeps ninety feet of slat reading as one line.
Build days
Slats & gaps
Boards clipped from behind off a spacer gauge, gap checked every fifth board, gate hung flush into the run on a hydraulic hinge. The crew that starts your screen is the crew that finishes it.
Handover
The walkthrough
The sightline photograph re-shot from the same spot as day one, both printed into your warranty folder. If the two photographs disagree, we keep working — that has happened once, and we replaced the line.
What every Latitude line carries
The gauge we keep
Not aspirations — shop standards, identical on a $4,000 garden screen and a $60,000 estate line. They are what the ten-year workmanship warranty is written against.
The architect two doors down photographed our screen for his own portfolio, then knocked and asked who drew it. Latitude drew it, Latitude built it, and the gap between every board is still exactly the gap they showed me on the sample rail.
Before you decide
Asked at every studio visit
The four questions every slat screen raises — answered the way we answer them across the bench, with numbers and sample rails rather than brochures.
Why horizontal instead of vertical boards?
Horizontal reads modern, hides a sloping grade in stepped runs instead of fighting it, and lets us fasten from behind on a steel subframe with no face screws anywhere. The honest cost: it wants a stiffer frame than vertical, and that frame is already inside our per-foot rates.
Cedar or composite slats — the honest maths?
Cedar installs around $64 a foot and asks for one oiling day every second spring; the hardwood-look composite runs near $78 and asks for nothing but a wash. Over fifteen years they land within about ten percent of each other, so we quote both on one drawing and let your calendar decide.
What does the shadow gap actually do?
Three jobs: it gives each board room to swell and shrink, it lets wind pressure bleed through instead of loading the line like a sail, and it casts a shadow edge that keeps a long screen reading dead flat. A slat with no gap is just a fence lying about its age.
Can a slat screen follow my slope?
Yes — subframes step with the grade and the slat lines run level within each bay, which is the look the photographs have. Steps land on posts, never mid-board, and the drawing shows you every one before a hole is dug.
Studio visits inside 48 hours · Vantage Hill, Port Arden and the coast road between · (555) 220-4816 · studio@latitudefence.example
Draw the line with us.
One visit, one drawing with your sightlines on it, one fixed number — usually inside ten days of the call. Sample rails come to the visit; the gap sells itself in person.