An owner calls us, the measurements are taken, the colour is chosen. Then comes the question that suspends the whole project: does the syndic know? If you own a flat in a French building, roller shutter approval is settled before the quotation, never after the fitting. Here is what we see come through, what holds a file up, and how to build one that gets voted through the first time.
Your shutter is private, the façade is not
Two logics for the same object
The roller shutter serves your flat and nobody else’s. You operate it, you maintain it, you replace it when it gives up: it belongs to the parties privatives, the private parts of the building, and no one is going to dictate what kind of curtain hangs behind your window. The box, the guide rails and the outer face of the curtain, though, are visible from the street. They belong to the appearance of the building as much as to you. That boundary, and not a question of ownership, is what decides whether your project has to go to the general meeting.
What can be seen is decided by everyone.
We put it that way on the phone because the confusion comes back every month. An owner feels at home, therefore free. They are free as regards the mechanism and how comfortable it is to use. They are not free as regards the colour their neighbour opposite will be looking at.
Read the building’s rules before you fall for a colour
The règlement de copropriété, the deed that sets the rules of the building, is the document nobody digs out of the file, and it settles half the matter. Some say nothing at all about shutters. Others fix the colour of the joinery, the position of the box, sometimes a single model for the whole building, with a descriptive schedule that must not be departed from. In the newer residences in Nice and Cagnes-sur-Mer that schedule almost always exists, and it makes life simpler: the colour is written down in black and white, and the discussion stops before it starts. Take the time to read it before falling in love with anthracite grey.
Where nothing is written down, what exists becomes the reference: the colour already fitted, the box height of the flat below, the profile of the curtains in place. No text, but a custom the meeting will expect you to respect.
How the vote actually works
This is the heart of it, and it comes down to very little.
The syndic prepares, the meeting decides
Any work that changes the external appearance has in principle to be authorised by the general meeting of owners, even when it is carried out on a private part and paid for by one person alone. The syndic — the managing agent — does not authorise anything: they receive the request, check it, and put it on the agenda. The conseil syndical, the owners’ council, gives an opinion. The decision is taken in the meeting and recorded in the minutes.
Agreement given over the phone is worth nothing. Get it in writing.
Which majority applies depends on the nature of the work, and it is for the syndic to say which one when drafting the resolution. That sounds like a formality. It is not: a resolution passed under the wrong majority remains open to challenge, and the owner who fitted their shutters in the meantime is left alone with the risk. We would rather wait for the wording to be checked than take a box down the following year. Ask to see the draft resolution before the notice of meeting goes out, and read it with the same attention you give the quotation: a comma in the wrong place on the colour will follow you for years.
Replacement like for like
Same colour, same type of box, same geometry as seen from the pavement: the façade does not change, so nothing is modified in the sense the building’s rules mean. A great many files stop there, with a letter of information to the syndic and dated photographs. This is also the territory of the lighter interventions, curtain alone or box re-equipped, that we describe in our guide to replacing roller shutters without building work. But “like for like” has to be demonstrated. It cannot simply be asserted.
Which is exactly where a manufacturer nearby changes things.
Fitting a motor and nothing else
Swapping a winder for a motor cannot be seen from below. As long as the curtain, the box and the rails stay where they are, you are in your own home. It becomes a collective matter the moment a cable runs along the façade, a trunking appears under the balcony, or a box gets screwed to the outside wall. A radio motor, and a solar motor even more so, avoids that debate before it begins.
What the syndic needs from your file
A syndic hardly ever refuses on principle. They put things off when they have nothing to show the meeting. When a file reaches us with two photographs taken into the sun and a quotation with no colour reference, we already know it will be adjourned.
- A dated written request, naming the flat, the floor and the openings concerned.
- Usable photographs: the whole façade, then each opening square on, box and rails visible, taken with the sun behind you.
- The RAL colour reference for the box, the rails and the curtain, with the finish stated (satin, textured).
- The technical description: type of box, material, overall dimensions, projection from the face of the wall.
- An itemised quotation naming the manufacturer and the fitter.
- The chosen control method, with the position of the control points.
- An argument about harmony: how the product matches what is there, or could serve as the reference for the replacements that follow.
- An undertaking to bear the cost, the upkeep and the reinstatement should the shutter ever be removed.
A file like that defends itself in the meeting. That is all anyone asks of it.
Preparing a resolution that stands a chance
The calendar matters more than the argument
The meeting only deliberates on what is on the agenda. A request that arrives after the notice of meeting has gone out will not be considered, however good it is and however urgent: it waits for the next meeting. Every spring we see the same jam of requests submitted too late, followed by the same shutters fitted without waiting, then the same painful regularisations. Send the file to the syndic well ahead of the meeting season, then ask for written confirmation that the resolution is on the agenda. Without that confirmation you have nothing.
A shutter that has stopped working does not justify going ahead anyway. A like-for-like repair does.
Three cases, three routes
Before advising a client on how to proceed, we place the project in one of the situations below. The sorting is done on a single criterion: what a passer-by will see once the job is finished.
| Situation | External appearance changed? | Goes to the general meeting | Documents that decide it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Like-for-like replacement | No, if colour, box and profile are carried over | In principle no; a written notice to the syndic is advisable | Photographs before the work, colour reference, product sheet |
| Motorising an existing shutter | No, unless a cable or box shows on the façade | No if everything stays inside, yes if the façade is touched | Type of motor, position of the controls |
| New shutter, different colour, different box, or a projecting box | Yes | Yes, as a resolution placed on the agenda | Complete file, quotation, harmony argument |
Answer the objections inside the resolution
The objections never vary: the colour, how far the box sticks out, and the notion that saying yes once opens the door to anything. Deal with them in the text of the resolution rather than out loud in the meeting, where you will have a few minutes and no photographs on the wall. A request that proposes a rule for the whole building goes down better than a request for an exception.
Nobody enjoys voting for an exception.
When the whole building does it at once
A façade that becomes coherent again
In the tightly packed buildings of Le Cannet and Cannes, the façade tells the story of successive replacements: whites that do not answer each other, box heights that change from floor to floor, curtains of different generations that are not ageing at the same rate. On the seafront, salt spray adds its own mark and widens the gap. A decision taken for the whole building brings the façade back into line and sets a reference that later replacements only have to follow.
The syndic gains one point of contact and one job to oversee.
What a building-wide order changes
A single measuring visit, one colour to coat, fitting that moves from floor to floor: the conditions bear no resemblance to those of a one-off order. In the older residences of Nice it is also the moment to deal with the weatherproofing of the rails and to move to motorised operation while the access is already in place.
Have both scenarios priced. The gap makes the argument better than any speech.
Why a workshop nearby makes the file easier
Matching a shade fitted a long time ago, reproducing a slat width that appears in no current catalogue, adapting the height of a box to a lintel that is not straight: these are workshop questions, not online-order questions. We coat to the RAL chart and manufacture to size at La Gaude, which means we can hand an owner a real sample rather than a picture from a brochure. That sample, held against the existing shutter and looked at in the morning and again late in the day, ends more discussions than a whole meeting. You can look at the boxes and curtains we make, and at how the workshop works.
Three traps that end in reinstatement
Fitting before the vote
This is the heaviest risk, and it does not fade with time. The building can require the work to be brought into line, or even the shutter removed and the façade made good at your expense, long after the job. Having paid in full regularises nothing. Having chosen a good product does not either.
We have turned jobs down for this reason.
The “near enough” colour
A white is not a white. Two neighbouring references are perfectly distinguishable on a south-facing wall, and the difference leaps out when one is satin and the other textured, because the light does not catch them the same way. The classic objection, which we hear every week: “it’s the back of the building, nobody sees it”. The neighbour in the block next door sees it very well from his balcony. Have the exact reference written into the resolution that is voted: it protects the building as much as it protects you.
It is the leading cause of disputes after the event.
The box that sticks out
Projection is checked with a line pulled from the face of the wall, not by eye from the balcony. A rail wider than the old one, a different slat pitch, a thicker bottom slat: each of those details counts as a change of appearance, even if the whole thing looks discreet from below. Look too at solid balustrades and fascia bands, which constrain the fitting, and at the rules that apply in conservation areas, which come on top of the building’s own.
The questions that come up in the meeting
Who pays, if the shutter belongs to the owner?
They do, unless a building-wide operation decides otherwise.
What is the risk in going ahead without approval?
Being made to bring the work into line at your own cost, removal in the clearest cases, and a lastingly strained relationship with the owners’ council. The time saved is paid back later.
Can the syndic approve it alone?
No, not once the external appearance changes. They prepare and table it; the meeting authorises.
Is a vote needed to fit a motor?
Not if everything stays inside the box and the room. A radio or solar motor removes the cable on the façade, and with it the debate. Visible trunking, on the other hand, has to be voted.
Build your file before you order
Dig out the building’s rules, photograph the façade and then each opening square on, and note the colour reference of your current shutters. With those in hand a quotation can be written seriously and a resolution can be defended. We prepare the product sheets, coated samples and images the syndic will ask for: start your quotation request and tell us how your building is arranged. Managing agents and fitters are quoted the same way for grouped operations, colour included.
Cannes has a high share of shared-ownership buildings. See our page on roller shutters in Cannes.
