Sunday 26 May 2013

It's curtains for me!

Finally! No more light streaming in our bedroom at the crack of dawn every day. No more freezing cold bedroom (hopefully!). No more baby black-out blind suckered to our window. We finally have curtains! A roman blind and a curtain with covered pelmet to be precise!

When we moved in, our bedroom had some rather hideous curtains up. A dark maroon coloured brocade fabric, with a fringed pelmet(!), that finished about 6 inches short of the floor, thereby completely failing at their intended job of shutting out the morning light, and keep the warm air in! Unfortunately (or fortunately!) I don't have a photo of them. As soon as we started having the bedroom re-done last August (new built-in cupboards, coving and redecoration) those nasty curtains came down, and the baby black-out blind went up. It's one of those travel blinds, that have suction pads to stick to the window, so that you can make baby's bedroom dark wherever you may be. Little did I know how useful it would be long-term, and that it would be used non-stop for 9 months!


Before we moved in

After we redecorated & had built-in wardrobes fitted



Before

After


After Christmas, I finally got around to visiting the interiors shop in our local town to look at curtain fabric. They came out to measure-up and give advice on what sort of fabric and colours they thought might work in our room, which is painted in "Elephant Breath". If you've ever wondered what colour an elephant's breath is, I can tell you that it is a kind of greige - in some lights it is a warm grey, and in others is almost brown. (You've gotta love those funny folk over at Farrow & Ball who think up the colour names!). I collected a few fabric books from them to take home to look at. Which I did....repeatedly...for weeks on end!

Finally, I decided on two fabrics (with the help of husband) - one for the blind and a different one for the curtains.  I'm a little scared of prints and patterns, as I always worry that I will soon get bored of them. The fabric books showed pictures of beautiful curtains and blinds in mix and match patterns, but I decided that as they were going to be pretty expensive, I didn't want something that would date or that I might get bored of, or anything that would make it difficult to change the decor of the rest of room. I had in mind some sumptuous curtains, so chose a taffeta fabric in a browny grey - not too shiny, but shiny enough to give a bit of glamour to the room. We went for some pattern for the blind - a geometric shape (almost a giraffe print) with a slight trim of bright pink to match some of the colour in our rugs in the room, and to brighten the colour scheme of the room a little. They also made a fabric covered pelmet, using the taffeta curtain fabric and trimming it with the blind fabric. Both the blind and curtains are lined with very thick interlining, so we're hoping this will make a huge difference in the winter, as our bedroom was one of the coldest rooms in the house last winter!

The finished result is lovely. It adds the perfect finish to the room.




It's hard to get a good picture to do them justice, due to the light from the window and my lack of camera skills!

The downside is that it is now extremely difficult to get up in the morning, as the room is pitch dark and feels like the middle of the night!










1 comment:

  1. It's a bit notable, really, what curtains can do for light levels and ventillation as much as ambience, which is why every part of a window design should not be taken for granted. Everything should be compensated for and taken into consideration.

    Roxie @ Allure

    ReplyDelete