Windows - Panels? Curtains? Blinds? Take Your Pick!

What is the point of dressing a window? It may be as simple as just trying to create a dark room to get a good night of sleep. If you are facing south it would not be unreasonable to want to shut out the bright sunlight dazzling you in your living room. Maybe you want some privacy from passers-by on the street or overlooking neighbors. Or maybe, just maybe, you want to create a softer touch to your room’s appearance.

Whatever your reason may be, there exists the perfect window dressing to meet your needs and interior design style.

Firstly, how can you achieve a good night's rest? If you want to create a room that is pitch black then there are a few tricks that will work. Get yourself some Roman blinds or black-out lining to go along with your window curtains. This is a thick, laminated lining with vinyl that proves really effective in blocking out the daylight. This should be used for lining relatively thick fabrics and not net or sheer curtains. You can also shut out the pesky stream of light that wants to creep over the curtain top by using a pelmet.

If roman blinds or curtains aren’t your thing, you can make yourself some Roller blinds from blackout material or just get some blackout blinds to completely cut out the light from you velux windows.

If, however, you enjoy waking up to the daylight then you can choose from a wider variety of style and fabric options. Lighter weight fabrics that float more may be paired with even lighter linings or with blinds that allow the sunlight to highlight the texture and pattern.

Wherever you choose to hang your curtains and whatever the fabric from which they are made, you must decide the type of pleating that will adorn the top. Two most common types are the French or pinch pleats where there is intermittent gathering of the fabric and the pencil pleat which is gather uniformly. Pinch pleats are recommended for a more elegant, sophisticated, sleek look. Tie or tab tops are more informal and utilise less fabric than pinch or pencil pleats. However, they are significantly more difficult to untie and as such would be best hung where daily opening will not be an issue.

Your blinds may be Roman (folding unto themselves when you pull them up) or Roller (rolling up unto a bar) which requires some stiffened material to create structure. For small rooms that you do not wish to clutter, blinds offer a modern and crisp look. Blinds, unlike curtains, may be pulled down halfway to cover the window’s top half alone. One very neat trick is to place Roller on the bottom half with hooks going half way up so that it can be easily rolled up so as to entirely cover the window’s bottom half. This is useful in places like bathrooms and in bedrooms where both sunlight and privacy are required. Blinds also do not cover radiators, allowing heat to circulate and easily freely in the room.

Voiles and sheers are worth looking at if you want your curtains to allow for privacy and block out the sunlight. These curtains may be lined with other thinner fabrics or unlined. Either way, they are excellent for diffusing sunlight and omitting the glare. Voiles come in various patterns and colors to suit your room’s style so that you don’t have to be stuck with Granny’s plain old net curtains.

Sliding panels are now a hot topic in window dressing. These can look quite fantastic in modern homes, these can look quite fantastic. These 80cm wide panels are flat bits of fabric that attach to some sort of sliding track by a thin bar which is further attached to the bottom of the panel in order to keep the whole thing neat and straight. If you have several panels, say 3 or 4, covering a wide window, you may have them in different patterns and colors for a dramatic interior effect or they can all be identical.

Window dressing can tie together your entire scheme and are an essential component on interior design. A limitless supply of styles and fabrics brings along endless possibilities.