Slatted fencing, fitted in London.
The architectural one. Even shadow gaps, clean lines, and no room for sloppy carpentry.Also sold as Horizontal slatted fence, Slatted screen, Contemporary fencing.
Slatted fencing uses evenly spaced horizontal boards with a deliberate shadow gap between each one, usually 10–20mm. Supplied and fitted in London it starts at around £195 per metre. It is the most contemporary timber option and the least forgiving to build, because every gap has to be identical along the whole run for it to look right.
Want to run the numbers first? Open the cost calculator with slatted selected.
Every run is fitted by our own team — see how a fence installation in London works end to end, or what's involved in a full fence replacement.
- From, fitted
- £195/m
- Shadow gap
- 10–20mm
- Look
- Contemporary
Supply, fit and waste away
Set to your privacy needs
Reads wider than it is
Why the gap size is the whole decision
A 10mm gap gives you a near-solid screen with a fine dark line between boards — the look most London architects specify. A 20mm gap floods the garden with light and air, and you will see through it from most angles.
We set the gap on site with a spacer, board by board, so it is identical from the house to the back wall. Uneven gaps are the single biggest tell of a slatted fence built in a hurry, and they cannot be fixed afterwards without taking the run apart.
What it costs and why it is not the cheap option
From £195 per metre supplied and fitted. Slatted eats posts — every horizontal board needs support, and the spans are shorter than a panel system — and it eats time, because setting consistent gaps is slow, careful work.
It also demands better timber. A cupped or twisted board is invisible in a closeboard run and glaringly obvious in a slatted one, so we sort the timber before it goes up rather than after.
Slatted, or hit-and-miss
People often mean one and get quoted the other. Slatted has an open, even gap you can see through. Hit-and-miss overlaps its boards so it reads solid head-on. If privacy is the driver, hit-and-miss wins. If the look is the driver, slatted wins.
If you want the contemporary line with no maintenance at all, composite slatted is the third option and starts at £320 per metre.
How it ages
Bare softwood slats silver over about two seasons. Some people want that; most do not expect it. A pigmented stain applied before the boards go up — which is the only sane time to do it — holds the colour for three to four years and is worth the small uplift.
Hardwood and thermally-modified timber hold their colour far longer and cost considerably more. We will price both on the visit if it matters to you.
- Modern extensions and garden studios
- Narrow London gardens that need to read wider
- Screening a bin store, hot tub or side return
- Anywhere the fence is part of the design, not just the boundary
- Total privacy on a tight gap budget — choose closeboard
- The cheapest possible replacement — choose overlap
- Very exposed sites with a wide gap setting
Questions we get asked
Compare it with
Hit-and-miss
from £195/mLooks the same from both sides, and lets the wind through instead of falling over in it.
Closeboard
from £175/mThe strongest timber boundary you can buy, built board by board on site.
Aluminium slatted
from £355/mThe contemporary line without the repainting. Powder-coated aluminium that looks the same in year ten.
Slatted across London & the South East
Send photos, get an estimateFree estimate · no obligation. Fixed-price survey later only if you want one, from £30 and credited in full against the job.