Window Treatment Ideas
Window treatments, together with walls, floor, and ceiling, form the background for the furniture of a room. Curtains may give accent to the room through appropriate choice of color and line, appropriately selected treatments that are well planned and proportioned give comfort, security, and privacy to the occupants of a room. Generally an interior designer plans a room with two or more centers of interest, planned as to balance each other. If the draperies vie with the rugs, the rugs with the sofa, and the sofa with the pictures for dominance, there is lack of repose. The lines, mass, color, and texture of the window treatment ideas must be so carefully planned that they blend quietly into the rest of the room. The type of window treatment to choose depends upon the part it is to play in the decorative scheme as a whole and upon the purposes it must serve.
For a DIY designer, modify and embellish off-the-shelf curtains and drapes to create a personal touch for your interior design. When designing a window treatment in an older home, sometimes less is more - try a simple stencil design for window curtains. These daffodil stencil patterns include free designs for two stencils. Suitable and inexpensive materials are cotton crape, net, and even cheesecloth. With stencil patterns, you can transform ordinary curtains into unique window treatments. A window treatment may be used to exclude an unpleasant view, to soften and diffuse the light coming through the window, or to frame an attractive view. Through careful choice of colors and textures, draperies may also serve as a connecting link between the walls and other furnishings.
Window Treatment Drapery Styles
The various styles of window treatment during the early 1800s included valances, cornices, draperies, and curtains. Hand-colored prints and drawings accompanied descriptions in contemporary ladies magazines. Regency era style drapery window curtains decorate a paladian window of three divisions by curtains of blue and lilac silk and taffeta, accented with large festoons. These examples are invaluable for decorators and designers in recreating a timeless and elegant window treatment design. Find creative projects and ideas for decorating every window style. Need wood blinds for your Victorian house? Both indoor and outdoor wood blinds were popular in Victorian style houses. See a style of a sliding wood blind which can be readily attached to the ordinary window frame.
Traditional Window Treatments
Create a beautiful original window treatments with valance designs from the past, featuring pelmets and lambrequins with illustrations. These designs are appropriate for a variety of old house window styles from French windows, double hung, bay windows and casement windows. A fun craft provided in a period magazine features several bird motifs to be embroidered as a border for window curtains. A French curtains design has a simple elegant drapery suspended on brass rosettes and ornamented with cord and tassels. It is suited either for a Regency style library or morning room decorated in a period cottage style.
Custom Window Treatments
The hanging of a drapery, or portière, over a doorway was a popular decorating practice during the Victorian era. Who doesn’t remember Scarlet O’Hara’s makeshift dress from the fabric of her mother's green velvet portières? These draperies were both decorative and functional; and especially useful in keeping out drafts and adding to the privacy of a room. Another example of an antique window treatment includes details of four Chinese floral brocaded yellow satin curtains together with two matching shaped pelmets from the Great Dining Room at the Chatsworth estate.
Holiday Window Treatments
Old house windows afford many opportunities for artistic and elegant decorative skills in holiday decorating. This design for holiday windows features an example of draping in gold-colored silk or white Burmese muslin, with the edge being fringed with gold tinsel balls.
