How Should You Treat a Window?

Window treatments...

are possibly the most common design element that we discuss in decorating, today. When my wife and I first started dating many years ago, she had a set of curtains in her bedroom that looked like what I imagine was the Grinch after accidentally wandering into Dante’s Inferno. Eventually we moved in together and after a little over a year of dating those curtains were retired, I’m happy to report. For the next several years, I never trusted her design ideas and always suspected her overall sense of style. All from those damn curtains that haunted me.

In this blog we will talk about a few of the ways we can dress our windows to look their best and make the statement we want to convey. Of course, there are more ways to do this than we can hope to cover in one blog, so we will start with some simple concepts that can be built on in many other creative ways.

Blinded by the light

one of the worst things to see in a room can be a bare window letting in the full effects of the daylight. Every spot on the floor, a single crack in the drywall, all will be laid bare. To make things worse, the window becomes little more than an ungainly hole in the room that lacks even the most basic aesthetics. A bare window is a toddler running about with no pants on and we are the parents determined to get this child dressed.

As always, let’s look at the 4 most common tools at our disposal to dress this unruly child of a window.

• Curtains
• Shades
• Blinds
• Shutters

Curtains and shades are called ‘Soft Coverings’ while blinds and shutters are ‘Hard Coverings.’ Having these terms in mind will be helpful as we decide how we want to style our windows.

Get blackout, what??

One of the most attractive styles of curtains today are known as blackout curtains. These are best suited in the rooms where we desire the least amount of natural light. Personally, I like my bedroom to be pitch black at night for the optimal sleep environment. Another benefit of the blackout curtain is that they generally offer an additional layer of insulation against both hot and cold temperatures helping your home to be more energy efficient. If you have a designated room for a home theater, this is another common area to use a blackout curtain.

Throwing some shade

One of the best features of shades is the hybrid nature of them. They do a better job of darkening the room than traditional blinds, when closed, and are more easily opened to let in light, than curtains.  Add in the fact that there is a myriad of styles available and we might just decide the best way to cover our window is with a new set of shades. When we shop for the perfect set of shades, we do have to ask if they will fill out the space on their own or if we want to add some type of light curtain to help frame the area more completely. Using curtains in this manner can add a beautiful accent to a room as well as help us round out our color scheme in a subtle and effective way.

Its curtains for curtains!

In our previous blog on lighting styles, we touched on using natural light as a way to easily brighten our spaces. While curtains can do many things to beautify our rooms, their primary job is to block out natural light. So, when we have an area, we know is better lit consistently, curtains will actually work against us. There are dozens of styles of easy-to-install blinds and shutters available to fit our tastes and our budgets. Blinds have long been a traditional go-to option and, just like our shades, they can be used with curtains to add to the aesthetic of the room. For the slightly more daring, there are great styles of shutters available that will be sure to make a lasting impression on any room in which we choose to feature them. One of the other upsides to shutters is that they can easily stand alone in our windows. So, when we are seeking a more minimalist look for our home, shutters may become a key component in that scheme.

It may not always be clear why...

it matters how we choose to dress our windows, but we never know who might come into our lives and our homes, or what conclusions they may draw. My wife eventually caught on to my reluctance to include her in our home design decisions, and finally asked why I didn’t trust her sense of taste. I admitted to her it was because of the curtains. As it would turn out, the curtains had been left behind by the previous tenant and not removed by the landlord. Since she was just starting out at that time, she left them up. We met shortly after and I simply assumed she had terrible taste in interior design. Now all these years later, I’m happy to report we just bought a new set of curtains for our bedroom and it was not an unpleasant experience. I even let her see what they looked like, first (baby steps, you know).

If you have any questions or need help with the interior design of your room, please don’t hesitate to email us directly at info@modesthut.com to have expert designers contact you from Woodlands Style House. Happy designing!