Let me help those ready made buyers

If you get to know me, you know that I am passionate about window coverings. It's what I know and do. I understand that not everyone will be a client of mine, but let educate those who insist and buying them. I have a hobby of going online and looking at homes for sale. Can be in our community or big cities far far away. I just love to see what is out there. I will also admit this is not the first draft of this post. Why? I had the good blog written, but I needed a photo, pretty easy to do in our area of bad fitting window coverings, but didn't want that person that I found the bad fitting window coverings to see their home front and center on my blog. I decided to try a few cities outside our area, funny, couldn't find much. I have concluded that the realtors in Dubuque tell their clients to leave everything up regardless of how it looks. Other communities they take down the curtains, unless they look great. You find rods but no curtains. So let me do this without embarrassing someone, because that is not my intent, I want you to know, if you are going to buy ready made curtains let's measure and hang them right. I find this in homes regardless if it is a custom home or a track home, new or old. If you have a custom home, and you want that custom look without calling a professional, it very important to get this right or it will cheapen your beautiful home quickly.

The one that stood out to me today was two things, they were hung too high, because the hem was far off the floor and the not enough width. The fabric was pulled almost straight when the sheers were pulled. When this happens there is no light filtering or privacy, so why hang them at that point. Here is what you should be trying to do. For sheers you want 2 to 3 times fullness of the window opening. So if you window is 50" wide you want 100" to 150" or sheer on your rod. That will give you some privacy and filtering of light. For curtains you want 2 times fullness. If you want them just decorate the sides of the window for color and pattern, you will want a couple panels on each side of the window. Based on a smaller widths that you get from ready mades. As for length, you want them to be 1/2 - 1" off the floor and if you want them shorter, just covering the window you want them to come to the bottom of the window trim, not to the glass. That will help you with light bleed. There are other lengths you have probably heard about, "breaking" or "puddling". I also have a way of hanging drapes to give you room height so you feel like your room is taller and feels more open, but we can get to that later. Let's just start with the basics for today.

The other basic thing that I see all the time is ill fitting blinds. I see this from the outside of the house when driving in neighborhoods. If you have a large front window and you go to a big box store to buy blinds, one blind will not cover your big window so you break it down to two or three shades. When you do this put an individual blind over each individual window. Don't put up two shades and butt them together in the middle of a picture window. It doesn't not look good and it does not help with light control. It's really sad to see this, when it is a easy fix. I see it in all neighborhoods old and new,

with this DIY being a big thing it is good to educated on what you are trying to accomplish.