Dress Up Your Home with Custom Window Treatments

by Clare Kaufman

Form and function should come together in your window treatments. Curtains, blinds, and shades do more than shield your home from glare and neighbor's eyes. They also dress up the room, adding color and style. Here's a closer look at the benefits of window treatments.

Window Coverings: Function
Privacy
Exhibitionists and remote country dwellers can skip this section. But for most of us, privacy is a priority--at least some of the time. Our homes are sanctuaries from the outside world. Window coverings offer varying degrees of privacy control. Exterior shutters and blinds can shut out the world entirely. Drapes offer a solid shield. Venetian blinds bring greater control--they feature slats that admit slices of the outside world while partially obscuring the view.

Light Control Window coverings keep outside elements at bay. Custom window treatments let you control exactly how much light gets in. Transparent shades reduce glare without obscuring the light. Opaque shades, blinds, and drapes block out the sun when it's time for an afternoon nap. Venetian and other slatted blinds tilt to offer the most light control; closed, they overlap to shut out light completely.

Window Coverings: Form
Material
Custom window treatments come in a wide range of materials. Curtain fabric may be sheer or opaque. Drapes involve heavy, lined textiles such as silk brocade. Slatted blinds range from high-end wooden varieties--oak, maple, cherry, or basswood--to faux wood, vinyl, and aluminum. The price differential is huge--wooden blinds may cost eight times as much as their aluminum cousins.

Style
A major benefit of window coverings is their ability to transform the look and feel of a room. Nothing says "opulence" like silk brocade drapes graced with a dramatic valance above the window. A drab carpet and nondescript furniture can come to life with a splash of brightly-colored curtain fabric. Even the horizontal or vertical slats of blinds add texture and interest to a room. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, a sheer lace shade brings instant romance. Window coverings don't just protect us from the outside world. They offer a virtual style vocabulary for the interior design of a room. Only when the curtain or blinds go up does a house begin to feel like a home.

Source:
"The Many Shades of Window Treatments,"DoItYourself.com