Spotlight: the Narrabeen curved fence

The client had a property boundary that ran along a gentle curve and a slight fall. The retaining wall had already been built, the garden bed was already planted. They asked for a "simple fence". We talked them out of it.

A straight fence along a curved boundary either has a kink at each chord break (looks clumsy from any angle) or it cheats by running parallel to the curve and leaving a wedge of dead space behind it. Neither was acceptable for the rest of the work that had already gone into the garden.

So we proposed a curved fence. Same budget envelope, more labour, less material waste. Here's how we built it.

Setout: surveyed the curve at 600mm intervals along the boundary. Marked each post centre on a swept arc rather than chord segments so the curve reads smoothly. Posts are cut with a small skew at each location (varies from 1° to 4° depending on local curvature) so the slats can attach square to the post face.

Footings: standard 600mm depth, but stepped down at four points along the run to follow the fall. The top of every post lands on the same finished height, even though the ground underneath drops 220mm across the 32-metre run.

Lighting: cored every post with a 12mm conduit hole. Low-voltage cable runs through the posts so there's no surface wiring visible. Transformer hidden behind the retaining wall. Lights are inset between selected slats, they read as part of the carpentry, not as fittings.

Slats: spotted gum, 90 × 35, fixed with 316 stainless concealed screws into pre-routed slots. 6mm reveal between slats. The slat lengths vary slightly across the curve (we cut to fit, post to post) but the reveal is consistent so the fence reads as one continuous band.

Three weeks on site, two weeks in the shop pre-cutting. The client said it took until the lighting came on at dusk for them to fully understand what we'd done.