Custom Window Treatments: Eighteen Ways to Customize Window Coverings

Your custom windows treatments add beauty and interest to your home. But, they can also be problem-solvers for different rooms. Each room has its own issues, requiring a unique solution. Here's how to make custom window treatments do double duty:

Create privacy

1. Your privacy choices aren't just "draperies open, draperies closed." Use a translucent pleated shade mounted on the bottom window sill, which you can pull up high enough to foil peeping eyes.
2. Sheer curtains, as plain or as fancy as desired, permit some view of the outside. The fuller they are, the more privacy they provide.
3. Half-height shutters break up the view while letting in light.
4. Gathered, pleated, or tabbed half-height curtains with a top valance provide privacy and light in a kitchen, bathroom, or bedroom.
5. Rotate vertical blinds to screen your room and let in sunlight.
6. Tilt horizontal blinds to prevent views from adjacent higher buildings.
7. Textured, uncolored stain glass, either as window replacements or hanging window panels, are gorgeous and break up headlights or other visual intrusions.

Control excess heat or cold

1. Line draperies with heat-reflecting fabric. The liner will also preserve your drapery fabrics from deterioration by sunlight.
2. Order dual or triple cell pleated shades, which let in light while insulating your home from heat or cold.
3. Select a beautiful fabric for insulated Roman shades, with edges that seal magnetically to your window frames.
4. Interior wooden plantation shutters with operable vanes provide some protection from heat and cold.
5. You can apply reflective coatings to the outside of your window.

Visually expand a room or window with a custom window treatment

1. Is your ceiling lower than you like? Design custom draperies to go all the way to the ceiling.
2. A valance that covers the wall between the ceiling and the top of the window frame adds to the tall ceiling illusion.
3. Is a window or room too narrow? Make your draperies wider than the window, so that they stack almost entirely on the adjacent wall space.

Darken a room

1. Dual-duty pleated shades that let in light by day, then pull up from the bottom with opaque fabric give you all the light or dark you want.
2. Opaque rollers pull down quickly, yet hide inconspicuously when not in use.
3. Heat-resistant drapery linings also darken a room.

The above ideas can stimulate your creative thinking. Make the most of your custom window treatments by thinking of functionality as well as beauty. Ask an interior designer for more ideas.