It’s about time for another reader request. This one is from Nadine: “I am wondering if you might have some inspirational curtain or window dressing photos? We are just moving into our new (well new to us) unit and are having a little trouble deciding how to hang some curtains… i.e. to the floor or to the bottom of the window sill etc. Any advice or examples would be greatly appreciated.” Now I often find myself wondering what to do with window treatments, in particular curtains, and never really know what rules I should be following. After going through my photo stash, it’s pretty clear that the acceptable standard is long curtains that either just touch the floor or puddle a little. And in my search that was for the most part all I found. My 2 cents is that if you have a small window and you’re trying to keep the space casual, then hanging a curtain that ends a foot or 2 below the window works. I did that in my office in my haste to do something with my little window. I happened to have had a piece of fabric I was dying to use that covered the window with about 15″ going below the window frame and just hooked it up on clips….a year and a half later and they’re still up and looking adorable (to me anyway). So here is some inspiration for you Nadine. And if anyone has any curtain tips for Nadine please do leave a comment.
Lori Dennis
Tracey Butler
Phoebe Howard
Rodolphe Foucher
Blount Design
Amanda Nisbet | Eric Roth |
Atlanta Bartlett | Simon Brown |
Steven Gambrel | House Beautiful |
Siskin Valls | |
Retrouvius | Guido Barbagelata |
Perianth | Rodolphe Foucher |
Domino | Judy King |
Laura wrote us an email with the following:
“I was inspired by this entry to ask you a question. There is a lot of discussion about the perfect white paint, but I have yet to come across a discussion about the perfect off white/cream/beige paint. I know people use it because I see it every so often in Domino. One of the things that I love about Domino so much, is that they talk about paint colors. White is discussed a lot. But, I’ve noticed that if there is a picture of a space with an off white/cream colored wall, the paint is hardly ever mentioned. If the perfect white is so often hotly debated, why not the perfect off white?
I am really looking for the perfect color for a room in my house that I am working on. Just to prepare you for the picture, we had a terrible water pipe leak and as a result we had to tear down most of the left wall and some of the ceiling. You can see in the picture the new dry wall. Also, our windows are very special. They were made from old telephone pole wood. Every window in the house is some variation of this window. I don’t plan on painting the wood or the baseboards. I’ve already painted one bedroom a robin’s egg blue that looks beautiful. I plan on painting the master a light gray (right now it is a horrible yellow). But this room I wanted to do in a cream color. Hopefully, this will be a child’s room someday and I want a nice neutral background that will be able to take on blue or pink accent colors. As you can see in the picture the color that the previous owner’s of the house used is a beige, but it has a lot of yellow in it, which I don’t particularly like.
Here is the room. I apologize in advance for the chaos, but I am still working on the drywall:”
What a beautiful window – and a whole house of them?!?! I am very jealous. I explained to Laura that I had absolutely no experience with off-white, while I always stick to pure white or light grey when I’m looking for a neutral paint colour. My suggestion for a non-off-white would be a light grey as I think it would be really pretty with blue or pink. But I thought I’d throw this out to you guys if anyone has any paint colour suggestions for Laura. What’s your favourite off-white or beige?
… simplicity and calm. Things are crazy around the world. Recession, war and greed gone wrong but maybe just maybe a change is in the air. A room full of books, sunshine through a window and a few well designed pieces of furniture. Bliss. Bench by Barnaby Tuke.
Suze Yalof Schwartz, Executive Fashion Editor at Large for GLAMOUR had a simple request when she emailed the other day. “Can you do a curtain story? Please :)” How can we resist? I found so many great images that this may be the start of a series of curtain calls. There’s traditional. There’s modern. There’s colourful and neutral and for good luck I’ve included bamboo and roman blinds!