Window treatments: How to select and hang curtains

Don't know your pleats from your pelmets? Kya deLongchamps shows you how to dress your windows to impress

Tied up on string, French doors wear curtains while the windows of this coastal home carry traditional striped blinds. Quirky and cheerful, the Cromer Embroidery fabric from Sanderson Home was inspired by the annual Crab and Lobster Festival in Cromer, Norfolk. From €77 per metre, suppliers include thedraperyshop.ie (Cork).

Always a draw, curtains offer a decorative flourish that can set the stage for a whole scheme, plus thermal performance, and a centimetre-by-centimetre light control. If you don’t know your pleats from your pelmets, here’s my simple-to-follow introduction for finding or making something swish.

PLEATS, PLEASE

Before considering whether to use a pole or rail, we have to start with the “heading”, that top section of the curtain connecting it to the hanging element. If you want a deep and very present, traditional heading, a relaxed, gathered-pleat is ideal for curtains with a long or short drop [length].

Sharper, pencil-pleats, popular for contemporary curtains, are gathered in snuggled, narrow, regular cylinders — a little more tailored and formal in look.

Luxuriant fuller pleats will demand up to multiples of the window’s width. Round up not down.

Wave headings are married to a dedicated track or pole and deliver a deep but chic look with rippled but perfectly repeating folds that stack beautifully.

Available in pencil, eyelet or double-pleat curtain (priced by size) with light-filtering or blackout (free option) with choice of thermal inter-lining. Blinds in 50mm, Chalk White Grain Venetians from €17.53, blinds-2-go.ie.

Double or triple pinch-pleats are a softer, decorator favourite, use more fabric, and are arguably the most luxuriant, with doubles less fussy than triples for modern rooms. Both come sewn-in and finished, so the width of your curtain choice must be perfect, as there is no margin for error. Don’t panic, as most poles and tracks can be customised for most styles of curtain (with the exception of eyelet and tab curtains). 

Looking for another take on pelmets to hide a track? Run the heading behind coving. Try covingdirect.ie for sleek ideas from around €25 per (polymer) length fitted with LED lighting.

POSITIONS, PLEASE

Using the tape supplied with the curtain and your hooks, you can drop the curtain low on a pole or track, or using a higher line of hooks, fully shroud it with the curtain before pulling the three strings to gather the material into pleats with gathered and pencil pleats. The tension is up to you.

A pole will seem the obvious choice for deep, high headers. For a modern glide with wand or remote operation, tracks are generally your best bet. You can buy all these depths of header and styles of pleat in custom and ready-made curtains, just go through images or examples of each type offered by the supplier, noting the pleat and pole type.

To completely cover a wall of glass-style window, try ceiling-mounted tracks and wave curtains to block out the light when drawn.

Sumptuous, long, gathered head curtains with a soft random drape make the best of this art nouveau design in Ragged Robin, Campion, Tansy and Buddleia; Freida in Mauve Fabric By Abigail Borg, €128 per metre, abigailborg.com.

For cottagecore styling, drifting gathered, eyelet and tab types are a great budget buy, and stiffened at the header with buckram, they will sit up in tidy shapes.

Keep in mind, that suspended pole positions, held off the wall, will admit some daylight around the top of the reveal. To lift the profile of your window higher, hang your curtains higher and consider pooling the materials on the floor in opulent puddles of material.

Ensure you are happy with the pattern, support, and header styles of your curtain open and closed.

ON TRACK

If you want to make a period architectural statement and match up your fixtures and fittings, choose a pole.

For modern discretion that makes a super-star of the fabric, stick to a track.

If you have only a shallow bit of room between the top of the window and the ceiling — again, stick to a track.

They are generally fixed around 10cm-15cm above the top of the window reveal unless you are setting the track on the ceiling, behind coving or say using them for sheers inside the reveal.

On either side, you can play around with 15-20cm of curtain (and therefore pole or track length) to each side of the reveal. With a pole, there’s the opportunity to give it even more aesthetic thump with a decorative finial that can pick up on other fixtures in the room.

Pulling curtains back as far from the window as possible without showing off the pillars of the wall, will admit as much natural light as possible.

To support curtains and sheers, you’ll need a double track. If you have a lovely window and view, frame it to advantage, while guarding our privacy.

When you get into a big investment in curtain elements with high design features, the temptation to go to remote or even smart operation will bite, something easier to design in with tracks. Bay windows can take tracks and poles with the exception of curved bays which will be limited to tracks without a bespoke product.

SCREEN CONTROL

Curtain and blinds used together make the ultimate use of articulated light control, adding as much privacy and screening as you need by day and by night. With a translucent blind, you can have soft distilled light on call, while knowing you can completely shut up shop by pulling both dressings home when you choose.

Keep them all in one solid colour or use a plain blind with a colour drawn from the curtain material or visa-versa. The downside is that this much window dressing, especially in overly fussy colourways can start to obscure the window as an architectural inclusion.

They also may get in the way of any view. 

Start by layering up plain blinds and patterned curtains. Combining prints can be tricky.

Think about contrasting, tonal or harmonising colours, plus changes in texture between curtains and blinds, even mixing up curtains with wood or wood-look varieties of venetians for example.

LINING

Lining curtains with a complimentary fabric or blackout lining is a sign of quality with practical and ornamental considerations. Having curtains made, linings in plains, ginghams, and stripes (unless offered as standard) will generally push up the price of your curtains considerably.

Obviously, by doubling up on materials and even adding an inter-lining, your curtains have greater body and weight, potentially improving their drape (the way they move and fall to the floor). Lining can provide greater light containment, and an additional thermal and even acoustic barrier to improve on the U-values of your windows.

If you have the funds and time to set-dress, two sets of curtains — with insulated lined curtains for cooler conditions and light to medium varieties for spring/summer can welcome in the new season.

Even high-quality fabrics lofted into direct light for a year or two can fade. Lining can add a degree of UV protection to the interior face.

Swished around from the floor to expose a different pattern or bold single colour, long curtains with liners can be highly theatrical. Most textile houses offer suggestions for teaming fabric designs, so flip over their books for inspiration for a curtain that looks fabulous from the outside looking in.

Heavy woven materials like wool may drape better left without lining.

Take the advice of your fabric supplier. Curtains are actually an excellent project for a starter sewer. If you can sew a straight line on a machine, you can make gathered curtains, and if you can make curtains, you can make liners.

There are dozens of books to get you started. My favourite (and it’s sold over 500,000 copies since its launch in 2017), is Anne Hildyard’s

Cushions, Curtains and Blinds

from Dorling Kindersley. Packed with tips by soft furnishing experts, it includes 25 projects you can start this weekend explained in detail with clear step-by-step instructions; €20.99, easons.ie.