Get drapes for your windows, even if you don't need them.
No, they’re not going to block the sunlight (not if you hang them well). Even if you already have blinds or shades on your windows to functionally let light in or keep it out, I’m a big believer that adding drapes will ensure the room feels cohesive and complete. They’re also a way to add texture and interest to your walls. And you don’t have to spend a fortune on them.
Custom drapes are truly amazing — especially if you pick a super-fun and colorful pattern for the fabric — but they cost an arm and a leg. If you’ve got the bank account to do custom, I really like working with The Shade Store (shout out to Melinda in the Nashville store). If you can afford to do custom drapes in one room only, I always recommend going for them in the main living room of the home since that tends to be where the most time is spent.
That’s what we did in the home shown here; they have custom drapes in all the main living spaces, but for the primary bedroom, we saved a bit of money by doing off-the-shelf drapes. These are navy cotton velvet drapes from West Elm with an acrylic-and-brass curtain rod from Ballard Designs. I’m a very big fan of that curtain rod; it’s so pretty. Don’t forget to get rings, too.
Places I look for off-the-shelf drapes include Target and Ikea to start at the lowest price point, and I’ll also look to Anthropologie because they have some really fun prints and patterns. Wovn, Pepper Home, and Spoonflower also offer semi-custom options that are a little bit more than off-the-shelf drapes but still much less expensive than custom drapes. Be sure to take note of whether the drapes you’re getting are sold by the panel or pair; it’s really depressing to get ready to hang them and find you only have a single panel.
For hardware, for an option that’s dirt cheap and inoffensive I go to Ikea’s Racka rod. Just make sure you get the brackets and rings, too (you can buy the Racka combination or just the rod itself; if you don’t get the combination set, you’ll just get a pole which is not helpful). To figure out what color rod to get, look at the drapery color, as well as the paint color on the wall and the trim around the windows where you’ll hang them as well as the hardware in the room. If the drapes are light in color, and especially if the walls and window trim around them are white, then I do white hardware. If the drapes are darker in color and / or have some dirty off-white color to them, I’d go with a black hardware.
For length and hanging them, you ideally want to hang them as close to the ceiling (or your crown moulding) as possible, and you want them to just barely touch the floor, so they’re floor length but not puddling on the floor.
I always use rings to hang them — either with clips or pins — and never use the rod pocket (meaning I don’t slide the opening on the backside at the top of the curtain through the rod) because I much prefer the look of rings. (Using the rod pocket looks a little too country style for me.)
Because I don’t use my drapes as functional window coverings — meaning I leave them open all the time and have wooden blinds on my windows that I close at night — I tend to put roughly 3 or 4 rings inside the bracket when hanging them, and 5 or 6 rings outside the bracket. To let as much light in as possible, I put the bulk of fabric outside the window, so it covers the wall rather than the window, and just covers the first couple inches of window.
