Choosing the Right Drapery for your Automated Window Coverings

Southern California homes are known for their exquisite floor-to-ceiling windows that take advantage of sweeping views. Whether you have an ocean, city, or mountain view from your windows, or just want to fill your home with daylight, large windows offer many advantages to Southland residents. Unfortunately, large windows come with their own set of drawbacks including heat, glare, sun damage to upholstery and artwork, and a lack of privacy. For all these reasons and more, most homeowners choose to install window coverings.

The options seem to be endless. Various fabrics and linings, mounting styles, automation, the list is very long. To aide in your determination of which style of window covering suits your home and lifestyle best, we’ve compiled some helpful information on typical design standards.

DRAPERY

Lining options:

• Blackout: Usually used in bedrooms to completely block out light
• Regular: a semi permeable fabric to filter the amount of daylight that emits from the fabric
• Unlined: No lining on the back of the window covering fabric. Depending on the fabric chosen, this can filter less light to maintain some level of daylight in a space

Mounting styles:

• Ripple fold:
  • 1” header with 5” bottom hem
  • Standard fullness: 120% with options for 80% or 100%
• Pinch pleat: Top tacked
  • 5” header with 5” bottom hem
  • Standard fullness: Triple pinch (right) with options for single pinch (left) or double pinch (middle)
• Pinch Pleat: Middle/bottom tacked
  • 5” header with 5” bottom hem
  • Standard fullness: triple pinch with options for single pinch or double pinch
• Tailored pleat:
  • 5” header with 5” bottom hem
  • Fullness: 200%
• Grommet:
  • 5” header with 5” bottom hem
• Sheers:
  • 5” header with buckram header
  • ½” bottom euro hem with chain

Additional drapery items to consider:

• Buckram: strip of white or translucent stiffener that helps add more defined shape to a drapery
• Memory stitch: an optional service that maintains the “S” shape at the bottom hem

ROMAN SHADES

Lining options:

• Blackout: Usually used in bedrooms to completely block out light
• Regular: Ad semi-permeable fabric to filter the amount of daylight that emits from the fabric6
• Unlined: No lining on the back of the window covering fabric. Depending on the fabric chosen, this can filter less light to maintain some level of daylight in a space
• Flat Roman Shade: Powerfull’s standard. Customers that want a streamlined look gravitate to this style because it is made from one solid piece of fabric with no seams
• Plain Classic Pleated: a flat shade with horizontal pleats sewn across the width of the shade
• European relaxed: These shades curve up when raised, creating a softer, more relaxed look. This style is popular for homeowners using more luxurious fabrics
• Front slat Roman: This style features horizontal tucks on the front of the shade to add texture and visual interest
• Soft fold/hobbled roman shade: A more traditional style, constructed with larger tucks of fabric all the way down the shade. Looks great in formal settings
• Mock-Roman shade with banding detail: a mock-Roman, or faux-Roman shade is a longer valance made to look as if a Roman shade has been raised. A mock-Roman doesn’t actually move up and down on the window
• Fabric to the back, valance forward: This style uses a reverse method of hanging fabric by creating a valance with fabric that has been looped in front to hide the shades when raised

Additional Roman shade items to consider:

• Hardware covers: Side cover is continuous to the roman valance. Usually used for CFWD fabric to the back of roman shades.
• Hard return: Fabric wrapped plastic side cover for manual roman shades
• Soft return: Fabric side cover for manual roman shades

DRAPERY TERMINOLOGY 101

Header: The top of the drape or curtain from where it is hung onto a curtain rod

Fullness: Curtain fullness is the relationship between the length of the curtain track or pole and the amount of fabric used in the curtains. There are different fullness ratios for each heading type, because some curtains need more fabric when hung

Buckram heading: A strip of white or translucent stiffener that helps add a more defined shape to a drapery header. Buckram hides between layers of fabric and lining to create a sturdier header

Valance: A shorter piece of fabric at the top of a window that can add a decorative element and comes in various styles. Valances can be used on their own to cover the tops of windows, of used in conjunction with drapery and other window coverings

If you need assistance deciding what shading system is right for you and your project, please call us here at Powerfull Systems.

To download our Whitepaper “5 Crucial Tips: What You Need to Know Before Buying & Installing Window Coverings“, please click here.