How to Choose Color for your Curtains

How to Choose Color for your Curtains 

Still one problem remains in deciding on style that of color. Since light and shade change color, it does not pay to be overly fastidious about the degrees of color used, but the choice of a hue is important, since this alone can change the architecture and the mood of your room. You can, for example, make a small room appear larger if you use different values of one color with a pale tint on the walls, a darker tone for the rug and a tone somewhere in between for the draperies. Also, red, orange, yellow and red-violet are "advancing" colors and tend to bring walls forward, making a room smaller, whereas cooler colors, blue, blue-violet, yellow-green, and green seem to recede, and give an illusion of space.

Monochromatic rooms are pleasant and fashionable, and in addition they make spaces seem larger. In any color there is a wide range of tints and shades. Tints' have white mixed with normal, pure colors, and 'shades* have darker tones by means of black mixed into the pure hues. Also, you are closer to the mono-chromatic idea if you use the secondary colors that are next to the primary colors on the spectrum. That is, with blue have green and violet-blue, violet and yellow-green. With red have yellow-orange, orange-red and red-violet. Depend on accessories for your vivid splashes of contrasting color.

Contemporary rooms favor large areas of white, natural color or gray in walls and fabrics, with patterns in color laid over this as a background. If you find a fabric in a. color scheme that delights you, you can build your room around the colors in it.

How to Choose Color for your Curtains 

Colors are said to produce certain emotions and reactions, although this, of course, depends on what colors are matched, and how they are used. Red, for instance, is considered the most lively color. In its very vivid forms it is effective in small amounts to add sparkle to a room. Tones of red that fit in with modern nature colors and can be safely used in large quantities are terracotta, shell-pink, rust and tangerine. Yellow in its paler, muted forms in glass curtains gives bright cheerfulness to a room, as does orange. Yellow glazed chintz can be attractive, but in rougher materials, gold, beige, and other off tones are better. Green is considered very restful, the opposite of red. Green becomes the basis for a group of correlated earthy tones, when olive green is the basic color, and primrose yellow, cucumber, pale chartreuse, sage, paleceladon, Lincoln green and scarab green are used. Blue was for a long time avoided, as a cold color; but now blue is once more important, especially in rooms where elegance is desired, as in Regency and Directoire, and is used with white and gold. Dusty colors, that have gray mixed in them, and gray itself, bring an element of peaceful repose into a room; and grays and near-black colors such as black plum, smoke gray, and black are used with china white, sky pink, tangerine, pearl gray, mocha and pomegranite for sophisticated interiors. Black abstractions on white or neutral ground are seen more and more in draperies.

Numerous nontarnishing metallic yarns, some glinting subtly, others bright and shining, are now avail-able, ranging from metallic lame to nubby materials with gold and silver highlights in the weave.

Provincial and Early American rooms use toile de Jouy fabrics in single colors of blue, green, faded blue, wine, red or amethyst on off-white back- grounds. Butternut is another provincial background color, successful with the painted woods, fruit woods, and generally lighter furniture of this type of room.

You have a greater opportunity to use color at your windows than in the past, since fabrics are easier to wash and clean, and easier to keep clean. This fact also makes it possible to use white in a carefree manner. While decorators have cut down the palette for any one room, they have not become afraid of color. Dyes are increasingly varied, and it is possible to find very pure bright colors and subtle tints and shades in fabrics, ranging from gossamer gauze to sturdy duck 

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Decoration and Curtains Styling

Decoration and Curtains Styling

Your decorative scheme is bound to influence your choice of fabric and the way you drape your windows.

Today it becomes increasingly difficult to label a room as Modern, Provincial, Directoire, or anything else. Modern rooms, no matter what the period is, have in common a smoothness and directness that separates them sharply from the cluttered rooms of other periods. Modern colors give them a contemporary feeling, no matter what the source of design. Some of the loveliest rooms combine the best in furniture and accessories from more than one period. You too, in all probability, have not felt that it was necessary to stick slavishly to any one period or style. It is much more likely that your home has taken its cue from the part of the country in which you live, whether you live in a city apartment or country house, and from your family's tastes and needs.

Nevertheless your window styling can pick up whatever style idea is dominant in your home, and in each room. Let's take the living room first.

Suppose you have a modern room. Limitless pos-sibilities emerge as to pattern or fabric and color, but in draping you are more or less confined to straight hanging draperies and glass curtains. You will want to avoid ruffles, shillings, festoons, and fancy tiebacks. If you have Chinese modern furniture, for example, glass curtains of raw silk shantung and draperies of solid-color damask with a weave that brings lines that resemble bamboo to the surface are possibilities. Or if you live in the Southwest, or in the country, and have a Modern room in which natural colors and textures predominate (such as exposed stone walls, great fireplaces, rush matting, bamboo blinds) you will want one o the modern hand-blocked or screen painted fabrics, perhaps in a Peruvian, Mayan, Guatamalan, or some other primitive print in one color against a natural ground. If your room is a more sophisticated kind of Modern, as in a city apartment, you may want one of the exciting abstract Modern designs. When tiebacks are necessary, use chunky pieces of brass, clear plastic, or simple wood, and avoid anything gadgety or fussy. In Modern fabric patterns, look for something simple that is, at the same time, not obvious a pattern that, because the artist has been clever, does not seem too repetitive.

Modern in feeling, but at quite the other end of the scale, is the classic style, in which the patterns suggest Grecian urns, classical columns, and figures. This style calls for delicately-draped hangings, swags, or festoons, falling in soft folds down the sides and some- times lying along the floor. They can be created in sheer materials and in richer brocades and hammered failles.

Decoration and Curtains Styling

If your room is Provincial, ruffles are very good, of course, and they can be deep, wide and plentiful. Sash glass curtains on a brass rod are attractive in a Provincial room, echoing the brass accents of accessories. There are very many attractive small-patterned fabrics on the market for Provincial rooms, in toile de Jouy and other documentaries and in Americana. Large curving cornices padded and covered with fabrics of the same pattern are attractive.

For formal rooms of period style, as Italian Directoire, Empire, Louis XV, or Georgian, draperies may be looped back in a more elaborate manner, and richer smooth-faced fabrics such as pure silks, antique taffetas and damasks may be used, as well as the newly fashionable laces and nets. Windows for these rooms are lavishly covered by lightweight glass curtains topped by contrasting valances which sweep across wide areas, or for narrow windows are made up of crisscrossed asymmetrical fabric lengths. Over-scaled brass or dark mahogany rods with minaret ends give an impressive air to these treatments.

If your family uses the living room for quiet evenings at home, for reading, sewing, and other activities of this nature, avoid patterns and colors that are too gay or lively. If on the other hand, you do much entertaining, and your living room is more formal, you can afford more exaggerated draping styles, and bolder, more dramatic color.

In the bedroom, patterns and colors should be restful. Here, of course, you will want to choose draperies that are most attractive to the member of the family whose room it is. Sturdy .cottons, ranging from sail-cloth and duck to monk's cloth, can be used in children's rooms, and in your son's and daughter's rooms where modern prints will be appreciated. Your teenage daughter may prefer a room which is more of a study and entertaining area, decorated in simple Modern styles with abstract-patterned draperies, to the conventional young girl's frilly room. Your own room may be as soft and inviting and luxurious as your wish can make it, with lustrous rayon satin or taffeta draperies to match quilted flounced spreads and dressing table.

Kitchens, as always, can be curtained informally with sash curtains, Dutch curtains and short, straight- hung curtains of lightweight materials, with gay trimmings. Kitchens are becoming less clinical, and now Provincial small-patterned drapery curtains will go with pine-panelled walls, and candy-striped chintzes, semi-abstract fruit and flower designs, and other bolder patterns and fabrics are used, particularly in a kitchen which has a dining space. 

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How to Choose Curtains Styles According to Window Architecture

How to Choose Curtains Styles According to Window Architecture

The window architecture itself has much to do in determining treatment. Your window may be an important decorative asset, if it is a picture window, a whole window wall, a bay window, or a corner window; you will want to make the most of it, and yet at the same time not have it stand out so vividly in the room that it is a disquieting factor. The windows must seem a natural part of the room's architecture.

On the other hand you may have two or three windows that by themselves do not seem important architecturally, but that will seem much more important and make your room smoother if you pull them together by your window treatment (that is with a cornice for the group, or a swag or valance tying them together, and by hanging your over draperies as though you were dealing with one window, with a panel at each end).

But also you may have problem windows where, for example, heights vary, or framing styles differ, giving your room an uneven appearance. Or in an older house the architect may have used a definite style, such as a Palladian window, which would give your room a perhaps unwanted classical atmosphere. In such cases it is quite possible to disguise the architecture, and with rods and fabric to transform the dimensions of the window.

The single two-sash window is today, and has always been, the most common type. The sash window may be long and high and narrow, and this may seem to give your room a smaller appearance as it will make the walls seem higher. In this case you will want to make the window seem wider by extending the top frame with blocks of wood and then hanging your draperies and curtains from rods that extend the full width of the extended frame. A deep valance or swag will also cut down the apparent height of your window.

If, on the contrary, the window is wide and low, and seems to make your room too large for its low walls, heighten the frame with a board which you can top with a valance board, and hang your draperies as though they began at this point. Still another way to increase height is to hang your valance board just below ceiling height. A short festoon draped over a pole, combined with filmy, deep-pleated glass curtains, will also give an illusion of height.

In addition to the sash windows are bay windows, which are two or more windows placed at angles to each other. Perhaps the most pleasing and uniformly successful way of treating this window style is to drape it as a single unit and have a continuous valance extend all the way across it. When there is too much wall space between the windows which form the bay, treat each window as a separate unit; but be careful not to have too mucli fabric in this space. Rods can be purchased which curve to conform to the curve of the bay. Another bay-window treatment is to have double sash curtains at each window with a continuous valance of the same material over them all.

Dormer windows, rising from a gable in a slanting roof, may be found in many extension attic-type G.I. houses, and may be treated quite informally. Simple ruffled window curtains of muslin, organdie or some other sheer material are always appropriate. Sash window curtains help a bedroom window under a sloping room to seem larger, particularly if used as glass curtains with ruffled tie-back draperies.

Double-sash windows give one a better chance to exercise imagination and ingenuity. Consider them as one unit, with valances or cornices helping to increase the illusion. The glass curtains may be caught together in an hour-glass shape with a bow at the center, although this treatment is apt to be more distracting and over-elaborate than it is pretty. Or the over draperies can be looped back over Venetian blinds, Japanese blinds, or a wide painted shade. Any number of decorative treatments come to mind.

How to Choose Curtains Styles According to Window Architecture

Corner windows may seem to offer problems, but actually they make very attractive window treatments possible, and give a great feeling of space to the room. Again, they are most successful when no drapery is hung in the corner and they are treated as a single unit (which they actually may be in modern homes and apartments). Blinds with lightweight curtains hung over them to soften the light with draperies at the side are always effective. Another way to tie such windows together is to obtain the feeling of a continuous drapery with festoon valances and long side panels. Or you can outline the entire window with a frame of double ruffles. Corner windows lend themselves to draw draperies.

Casement windows are those windows which swing on hinges at the sides, opening out like doors. They can be single or double, and open in or out It is customary to curtain them with casement cloth, shirred on rods at top and bottom, but you may also wish to provide them with a pair of traverse curtains. A French window, or a door hung as a casement but extending to the floor, may be treated in the same way. Cranes or swinging rods are practical for casement draperies, as are traverse curtains.

It is only since the 1930's that architects have placed great emphasis on using natural ventilation (or heat from the sun's rays ) . Architects then turned the rooms in the house that were most frequently used to the south, and the south wall was in effect one huge window. This idea has become increasingly popular, and today most new homes feature at least one large "picture" window, while windows throughout are larger. In the most advanced modern homes whole sides of the house are virtual sheets o glass.

Actually, a true picture window is a large window with an uninterrupted frame of glass, with no muntins (or crossbars that break the window up into small panes). This is preferable because a view improves when seen through an uninterrupted expanse in which the frame of the window frames the view just as it would a picture. But the term has come to mean any very large window. In both window walls and picture windows the glass may be fixed so that the window never opens, and ventilation comes from slats beneath the window.

Most popular draperies for large windows are the traverse or draw types. These range from fine-count marquisette (44 x 30 threads per square inch) and shimmering glass-fiber yarns to stately floral-print failles and finely-textured satins. Drapery materials should not be too heavy or bulky, so that they may be drawn back and forth easily. Sturdy traverse rods help make these draperies practical. Draw draperies are particularly suited to bedrooms because ventilation, light and privacy are very important in these rooms. In bedrooms it is more necessary that the draperies rather than the glass curtains be of the traverse type.

It stands to reason that if you have a large window you have a good view, and you will not want to obscure it with curtain fabric hung over any portion of the glass. Have your draperies hung at the sides, like portions of the frame, ready to be drawn when you choose. One way of treating a picture window with east or west exposure (where glare is not so great a problem) is to frame the window with a rodless valance on all four sides that is, with shirred and ruffled material attached to parallel rods or one rod, or with a backing of pleated heavier material such as mattress ticking tacked to the frame.

Exposure is important, as glare and light vary, depending on the way the window faces. A southern exposure, which affords heat and maximum light, is favored in modern homes, and glass curtains are important with this exposure as an aid to cutting glare. If your materials are not sun fast, it is wise to line draperies hung at this exposure, as the lining may be renewed thus adding years of service to the fabric. Soft mellow tones may be selected, as the sunlight itself adds brilliancy. For northern exposures warm tones of yellow, orange, and brown are the best choice, especially in bleak northern parts of the country. Light filtering through warm-toned glass curtains may cheer the darkest corners. East light is colder than west light, and warm colors should predominate. 

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How to Choose Curtains Styles According to House Architecture

How to Choose Curtains Styles According to House Architecture

The architecture of your house will have a lot to do with your decision on window treatment, as you will want to use your draperies and curtains to bring out the best qualities of the architecture from the exterior as well as from the interior, Thus, white ruffled tied-back organdies and other sheer materials are still, perhaps, the most effective curtains for a Cape Cod Colonial house. But today many young couples who really want modern small houses are forced to accept the modified Colonial types, since in most sections of the country small modern houses are not yet within reasonable price brackets. It is possible to give such a home an intriguing modern appearance with, for example, vivid plain fabric draw- draperies across a breezeway, a modern print at the picture window, and so forth. But caution should be used in combining decorating styles as expressed by your curtains, and architectural styles. Certainly it is incongruous to hang looped-back damask draperies in a ranch style house, just as it is inappropriate to have ruffled organdie in an Italian villa.

As far as possible, without making the interior dull, it is a good idea to make the curtains alike in both shape and general style, since it is distracting to see in one facade looped-back, straight-hanging, Dutch style, and various other treatments. If your styles do vary from room to room, however, use glass curtains of the same color throughout the house, and this will help achieve unity on the exterior.

How to Choose Curtains Styles According to House Architecture

From the interior, too, the window treatments should have a certain amount of uniformity, especially in those houses where rooms open into one another, or where there is a dining area as part of the general living space, as in many new, small homes. This is especially true of the ranch type house, where all the rooms are on the same floor. It does not mean that you need use the same print throughout, or the same fabric or color, but there should be a correlation of materials and textures, and a blending of colors. If, for example, draperies are featured in the living room, of linen of smoke gray with chartreuse and hunter green leaf patterns in the print and a chartreuse moss fringe, the adjoining dining area can have plain smoke gray linen drapes with chartreuse fringe, or chartreuse draperies with gray fringe, and possibly a valance and tiebacks that repeat the leaf pattern.

Casement cloth, or glass curtains, as mentioned, give the house not only uniformity from the outside, but also on the interior. 

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Deciding What Style of Curtains You Want

Deciding What Style of Curtains You Want

Deciding what style of curtains you want is not too easy if you want to be sure of having at the same time the most functional and the most attractive draperies or curtains possible. You must answer these questions first:

1) Do you have a pleasant view from your window, one that you want to bring into the room, make a part of the decoration?

2) What style of architecture is your house?

3) What style of architecture is your window?

4) What period or decorative effect is your room, and how much does the furnishing of one room depend on that of another?

5) What exposure does your window have? (This question influences your choice of fabric and color.)

The question of outlook is fundamental. Primarily what one remembers about a window is what it looks out on, not how it is draped. If your room looks out on a beautiful private garden, you can afford to have glass curtains that offer a minimum of privacy, a maximum of bringing nature into the house. If your windows look out of a front yard and a quiet street, lovely in themselves but not too private, you can still have glass curtains which permit a maximum view of the outdoors and yet offer privacy from the person looking in.

Deciding What Style of Curtains You Want

Suppose, however, that you live in the country where the general effect is pleasant, and yet that ugly house across the street, the new housing development, or the neighbors' children's sandpile spoil the view. Or suppose you live in the city and have a view mainly of ugly roof tops, although you do get an expanse of sky and changing panoramas of sunsets and sunshine! In both these cases you will want a window treatment that offers glimpses of leaves or sky while obscuring details. Marquisette or net glass curtains will do this, as will Japanese bamboo blinds or Venetian blinds.

On the other hand, you may have a distinctly unpleasant view into a dark courtyard, or smack up against a neighbor's garage or house in the suburbs. Then you may as well decide to turn your window wall into an attractively hung and draped expanse. You may want to extend your draw curtains from wall to wall, and have them drawn open at night for ventilation, or you may want opaque glass curtains that let in light and appear pleasantly translucent in the day without giving a view, with the interest created by the over draperies. 

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