Decorating Tips and Window Basics
Here are some tips we have picked up along the way, from researching and from other websites. We are collecting them here together to pass along to you and hope they are helpful.
Transform the look and feel of your home with playful and punchy colors.
Do you have a kitchen that needs new curtains and a "face lift"? You will be surprised at the difference it will make just to give the glass a good cleaning, letting the sunshine in. For no streaks, use newspaper for drying. Choose a bright floral fabric to hang in a new different style curtain. Then place your favorite plants or flowers under window. There! You have a cheery new room.
Transoms atop regular windows allow extra light to enter a room without sacrificing privacy. These two-part curtains have a sheer fabric at the top and privacy panels below.
Works well with tall windows.
Measuring Windows for Treatments
Select an inside or outside mount for your window treatment: An outside mount is the most common mount for curtains and drapery. The hardware for this kind of mount may be secured on the window frame or on the wall outside the frame. If there are center support brackets needed and you are going to mount the side brackets on the wall, be sure they are high enough so that the center support will clear the top of the frame. An outside mount will make your window appear larger; it can hide an unsightly window frame, and when the curtain is open, will provide a more open view.
An inside mount should be the length of the inside of your window (not over the molding). For an inside mount, be sure that the frame is deep enough to accommodated the depth of the window treatment with its hardware so that the treatment is flush with the front of the frame. Blinds, roller shades, and curtains on spring rods most often use an inside mount. An inside mount is best for some treatments because it provides a finished, built-in look without covering your window molding.
When mounting curtain rods you can:
Mount up to the ceiling.
Mount centered between the top of the window frame and the ceiling.
Mount even with the top of the window.
Mount inside the window.
Mount 1"-2" above the window frame.
How high should your width be when mounting curtain rods?
Mount even with the outside edge of the window frame.
Mount 1" - 2" from the outside edge of window frame.
Consider what is beside the windows (cabinets, corners, etc.) and determine mounts accordingly.
Curtain Lengths
The rule of thumb for curtain lengths is that the curtain should stop either just at the top of the windowsill or just at the bottom of the window frame or top of base boards.
The ones that just brush the sill are usually associated with cafe-type curtains and treatments that live inside the window frame. If you are covering the framework you want to go to the bottom of the frame or to the floor on both sides.
The sheers should be the same length as the drapes, or about 1/2 inch shorter. Never longer.
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Spice It Up
Photos, posters and collages are three ways to liven up your walls. Alternately, for a big color splash, use fabric. Cover the walls and the back of the fabric with liquid starch, and then smoothing the fabric onto the walls. To remove, simply pull the fabric down and wash the walls. Hang matching curtains or drapes.
The starch acts as an adhesive and it doesn't hurt the walls. Beware, though: Spray starch does not work for this purpose. You must use a nonaerosol starch, such as liquid Linit or powdered Faultless, in order to adhere the fabric to the walls.
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Bedroom decorating tips
Your bedroom should be a place where you can get away from it all. Doing a bedroom-decorating project adds to your individual taste and a key thought. Above all things, you want it to be at ease. Think of your bedroom as a retreat, and let your imagination go!
Draperies and blinds provide some privacy, shy away from anything that's too heavy or overwhelming. They play a key role in your bedrooom and can change the total look and feel of the whole room.
This is an affordable way to light up your sense of style. Here's an area where your bedroom decorating ideas and personal tastes and creativity can really come through. Select a few pieces that you really love.
If you can walk into your bedroom and think, 'I love this!' you've done a great job. Keep comfort and your personal tastes in mind, and you should end up with your bedroom decorating project that's calming and restful.
Contact us for helping you choose your window treatments.
Window Treatments: Questionnaire
1. What is the purpose of the window treatment?
Privacy Depending on where you live and in what direction your windows face, privacy might be your utmost concern. Day or night, you want to feel private, safe and secure, free from eyes that may pry into your home.
Light Control Do you need to sleep during the daytime? Does harsh morning or afternoon light come streaming into your home? Controlling the light to block out the sun while you sleep or to protect your furnishings from fading and other types of sun damage would be a major consideration.
Decorative If you want to showcase an architecturally beautiful window or you just need something to make a plain window more festive, you may want a purely decorative option, one that provides no function other than simply looking good.
Climate Control Does the cold winter seep into your house through your windows? Or does it get so hot in the summer that you want to block out the light but let in the breeze? Different window treatments can help alleviate severe climate by providing insulation
2. What type of window do you have?
Arch
Door/Full Length
Bay Window
Front of House
Square/Rectangular
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Winow Treatments: Planning
Stand in an empty room and one of the first things you'll notice is the windows- their shape, their size, the light that enters through them. Large or small, individual or grouped, rectangular or arched, they have enormous influence on your living space. By dressing them in cloth you link them to the rest of your decor, soften their architectural qualities and block the view in and out. Window treatments may not be quite as permanent as the windows they dress, but their role in establishing the ambience in a room is at least as important. Yu can interpret them in a style that is casual, elegant, traditional, quirky, colorful, quiet or dramatic.
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Planning: Thinking Creatively
Most window treatments are simply rectangles of cloth that are eased, pleated or draped over a window opening. They're easy to visualize and, once you buckle down and measure accurately, easy to plan and make. Their shape is almost always uncomplicated, so they're fun to embellish. Because they're such an important part of a room's decor, you can use window treatments to create or accent a color palette, or to establish a design style or theme. And they offer endless opportunities for showing off beautiful fabric. Before you select the specifics of your window treatment, be sure you understand its place in your overall decorating scheme. Following are some questions that will focus your thinking. You'll see that the answers work together to help you choose window treatments that will be successful in every way.
Are you decorating or redecorating? Creating a whole new ambience or just changing one or two elements? Will you be integrating your new window treatment with a new or existing decor?
What about style and ambience? What style is the architecture and does it provide the key to your decor? How dominant should the window treatment be? Do you want it to dictate the style or colors used throughout the room, or act as a discreet backdrop? What kind and how much of a statement should your new curtain, swag or shade make: Quiet? Breathtaking? Witty? Tailored? Casual? Have you considered the trims as well as the fabric?
Stripes, checks, plaids. They're clean, fresh, fun and sometimes very sophisticated. Whether woven, or printed, they come in every scale, color and fabric imaginable.
What about decorative hardware and accessories? Not all treatments call for decorative hardware, but those that do can really be enhanced by it. Would you like poles with decorative finials? Ornamental brackets? Will the curtain slide on rings? What about holdbacks? Tiebacks? Does your taste lean toward wood? Metal? Painted? With a special decorative finish? An ornate or simple shape? The options are myriad. If you want curtains or scarf swags, choose your design and basic hardware styles together, then select the specific hardware to complement your architecture and fabric.
What about the windows? Are they architecturally special, making you want to show them off? Perhaps the window dressing should be installed inside the window recess so the molding is always revealed. Is the view so spectacular that creating privacy or shade is the only reason for a window covering? . Are the windows unsightly, making you want to camouflage them? Perhaps the treatment should be installed outside the window recess so you can visually alter the proportion. Most designs can be installed inside or outside the window recess.
What is the purpose of the window treatment? To provide a decorative accent? To focus attention on a view? To soften the architecture? To make the room look larger or smaller? To provide privacy? To darken the room for sleeping or to shield furnishings from the bleaching rays of the sun? Will you need to combine curtains with a shade, blinds or shutters to meet your requirements?
Should the treatment be adjustable or fixed? If you're making curtains, do you want them to draw open at the top or just be held back at the sides? If you're making a shade, do you want it to go up and down or be fixed as a valance?
Are you totally confused by now? Just keep it simple you say. Too many questions to answer. We understand.
Jacquard fabrics come in myriad pattern styles. Take advantage of their reversible weave and let the "wrong" side show on tied-back unlined treatments.
How long do you plan to keep the window treatment? Are you decorating a child's room? A dwelling you don't plan to stay in? Do you just want to create privacy quickly until you are ready for a major redo? Or is the treatment part of a long-term decison? Answers to these questions may help you <
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In the excitement of finishing a quilt, it's very easy to forget the important finishing step of adding a rod pocket. But taking a few minutes to add one will make your life much easier. Rod pockets make it simple to display your quilts without having to put nails or pins into the quilt, which could leave permanent holes. Adding a rod pocket before stitching the binding will result in a nicely finished quilt that hangs beautifully, and looks good from the front as well as the back!
Passionate purple is intense and exciting, sophisticated and sexy. Plus, purple stands as the bridge from warm to cool a blend of risque red and calm blue. Bold purple hues are often reserved for supporting roles in decorating, such as pillows, because they can be overwhelming on a large scale. The serene, softer side of purple--delicate lavenders, lilacs, and mauves--are tapped more often as leading players in color schemes. Or, true purple can pair with white and yellows to balance the color's intensity.
Crisp & Clean Green
Deep hunter green evokes a woodsy, lush feeling. Similar green hues are brought in with fabrics. Finally, greens in well-chosen accessories add more layers of interest. Wood tones from the floor and furnishings add warmth and play into green's natural associations. White and cream also give the deeper colors a chance to pop.
24-karat
When yellow is dusted down with darker hues, it shifts from clear sunshine to spun gold. Light-starved rooms seem to glow. When turning to warm hues such as yellow to create a light room, don't discount the power of wood tones. Complements hardwood floors.
From Mellow to "Hello!"
Playing to yellow's strength as a sunny hue, buttercream adds warmth to a striped decor. Matched with cool gray and cottage white, yellow steps in to prevent the scheme from being sterile.
FACTS ABOUT FABRICS
Fabrics can dramatically change a room's appearance, giving an entirely new look to furniture, windows, even walls. But there are so many fabric choices that settling for the right colors, patterns, weights and textures can be overwhelming.
Q: What aura are you trying to create? The fabrics you dress your room in, like the clothes you wear communicate how you want to be perceived.
Q: Can you choose any new fabrics that please you? Or do they need to match pre-existing materials?
Q: Is dirt resistance, fade resistance, durability or expense an issue?
An environment filled with solid, lightly-colored fabrics is ideal for the calm, cerebral person who wants to avoid conflict.
Your Aesthetic: Creating the Right Aura
If you're a calm, cerebral person who doesn't like conflict, focus on solid colors or simple, symmetrical patterns in plain or lightly textured fabrics. Solid or striped linen, checked or textured wool, cotton, silk or blends in whites, pastels or earth tones can all fit the bill.
If you want a lively, energizing environment, look for wide asymmetrical stripes, large abstract patterns or brightly colored solids in no-nonsense cotton canvas or denim; or choose earthy-colored ikats, kilims or African mud cloths.
If you live at the beach, consider nautical prints or palm tree motifs. Sturdy linens, crisp cotton ducks and denims in bleached whites, sandy yellows and sea blues are all appropriate.
If you want an indoor garden feel to your room, look at floral chintzes and green and red silks, satins or cotton blends.
If you want an urban, contemporary environment, focus on solid-colored neutrals or geometric patterns in plain or textured chenille, linen, cotton, leather.
For something upscale and traditional, look at brocades, embossed velvet, damask, taffeta.
A jacquard velvet sofa conveys an upscale, traditional aura as well as adding color and texture to the room. Photo Courtesy of Latimer Alexander.
Compatibility: Finding Fabric Matches
If you were to imagine your fabrics as humans, what age would they be? Would they be toddlers, young girls, young boys, adults, senior citizens? Select contemporaries when mixing and matching fabrics.
If your fabrics had a nationality, would they look like compatriots, or at least allies with a common culture? Make sure that backgrounds match or complement each other in color tone, For instance, when intermixing patterns, avoid pairing a crisp white background with a creamy one.
Avoid too many patterns on too many different planes (walls, floors, countertops, seating, window treatments). If, for instance, you're stuck with a patterned carpet, pickled countertops, patterned wallpaper or a stenciled ceiling, be frugal with upholstery and drapery patterns.
Be aware of architectural patterns within your room. Tiled or parquet floors, stuccoed or paneled walls, circular windows and arched doors all have inherent patterning that will need to meld with any fabric patterns you introduce, particularly geometric ones.
The Practicalities: Selecting Fabrics You Can Live With
Before buying any fabric, test a sample in the exact area of the room where you plan to use it. It's worth purchasing a yard or so in advance because you won't get the full effect of a fabric's color or pattern in a small sample. Remember, light plays tricks on color, and so do neighboring colors. Test fabric combinations together in their respective positions.
Fabric quality, durability and colorfastness vary greatly. Try to get warranties from your fabric supplier based on anticipated use.
Here are some general rules:
The most dirt-resistant fabrics are vinyl, acrylic, polyester and olefin.
Patterns, particularly multicolored ones, conceal dirt better than solid colors.
Of the solids, gray/brown neutrals in the mid-value range conceal dirt best.
Light or white solid colors show stains and dirt more than colors in the mid to dark value range.
Dark colors show dust more than light colors.
Dark, matte colors absorb light. If you are trying to brighten your room, favor light-colored, shiny fabrics.
Fading is more noticeable on dark colors than on light colors.
Blues and oranges are particularly susceptible to fading.
Acrylic, polyester and linen tend to be more fade-resistant than other fabrics.
Woven patterns tend to be more fade-resistant than printed patterns.
Synthetic fabric dyes are more fade-resistant than vegetable dyes.
The most durable fabrics tend to be cotton duck, denim, heavy linen.
The most moderately-priced fabrics tend to be canvas, denim, percale.
A patterned fabric with a large repeat will require extra yardage for seam matches.
Thick mohair velvet and wool can feel stifling in a predominantly hot climate.
Light silk, satin and chintz can feel chilly in a predominantly cold climate.
