A pergola is a difficult thing to judge from a photograph. You cannot tell from a picture how solid a post feels, how quietly a roof moves or how the light changes underneath it. So when Deponti held an open day at the start of September to show its new models in person, we went.
Two pergolas were the centre of attention, the Pinela Tilt and the Pinela Delight, joined by a new carport and two side elements that deserve more notice than they will probably get. Having now stood under and beside all of them, here is what we found.
The Idea Behind a Louvred Roof
Both models have a roof made of aluminium louvres that rotate by remote control. Open them and you have sky and moving air. Angle them and you get shade without losing the breeze. Close them and the roof is rainproof, with water running off through the frame. One structure does the job of a parasol, a pergola and a solid roof, and you choose between them minute by minute.
That flexibility is the whole appeal in a British summer, where the same afternoon can ask for all three.
Pinela Tilt: The Bold One
The Pinela Tilt is the bigger statement. The frame is square and cubic, standing on 150 by 150 millimetre posts, and it carries a span of up to seven metres between two posts. In practice that means a wide terrace with nothing in the middle of it, no post standing where the table wants to be.
In person it has real presence. It suits a larger house, a wide run of doors, or a garden where the pergola is meant to be the main event. Frame and louvre colours can be mixed, which lets it either match the house or deliberately stand apart from it.
Pinela Delight: The Refined One
The Pinela Delight does the same job with a lighter touch. The lines are slimmer and the whole structure reads as quieter, so it settles into a garden where the Tilt would dominate it. The louvres are tilted the same way, the operation is notably hushed, and warm white LED lighting is built in for the evenings.
If your house is traditional, or the garden is modest, or you simply want the structure to recede and the planting to do the talking, this is the one we would point you towards.
And Something for the Drive
The same design language has been carried over to the front of the house. The Pinela Carport brings the look of the pergolas to a carport, so the structure over the car can match the structure over the patio. There is a Pinela Delight carport as well, for those who prefer the slimmer lines. For anyone doing the front and back of a property together, that consistency is worth having.
New Ways to Close the Sides
A roof deals with what comes from above. Low sun, a cross wind and the neighbours all arrive from the side, and two of the new products are aimed squarely at that. The louvred sliding panels run along a track and their blades rotate as well, so you can slide a panel to where the sun is and then angle it to taste. The finishes include a wood effect alongside anthracite, black and white.
The motorised screens do a similar job with fabric, dropping at the press of a button to cut glare and wind and rolling away out of sight when you want the view back. Either one turns a pergola from a roof into something much closer to a room, and both can sit alongside frameless glass sliding doors on the side that faces the view.
What We Took From the Day
Seeing new models before they reach customers matters for a practical reason. When you ask us how one compares with another, we would rather answer from having handled both than from a specification sheet. We can now do that for the whole Pinela family and the side elements that go with it.
If you are weighing up a louvred pergola, tell us the width you want to cover and what the house looks like, and we will tell you which of the two we would choose in your position, and why.
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