Base them on your lifestyle
Your choice of living room curtains will be heavily influenced by your family's lifestyle, and how you use your living room.
Quite often the living room is one of the largest rooms in the home, and has large windows to match. A large window give you the chance to use the welcoming effect of fabric to full advantage. You can achieve both a luxurious and cozy effect simultaneously. It's also the room which may be in constant use, during the day and especially in the evening.
So one of your aims may be to allow as much light in during the day, while in the evening to have a room with a certain amount of impact.
A few guidelines...
Does your living room contain some of your most prized furniture - family heirlooms, antiques, expensive couches and sofas, valuable framed pictures, or collections of china? If so, your living room curtains could well be luxurious, formal arrangements, using expensive fabrics like silks or damasks, with trimmings to match.
But take care, because the various items in a room should be related. Expensive, professionally made curtains and drapes would look out of place against a cheap carpet, badly painted walls and threadbare upholstery.
All this doesn't mean that you need a busy, traditional room. You can still use luxury living room curtains with a simply furnished room, which may at first glance seem quite plain. For example, if your furniture has simple modern lines, then plain living room curtains trimmed along the edges in a suitable contrasting color will compliment your room and be totally in keeping with it.
We often find people who want to use a traditional style for their living room curtains, but are afraid they will completely overpower the room and make themselves appear ostentatious. You can get over this by using pale monochrome or two tone colors in the room. You'd be amazed at the rich but restrained effect you can get from using light colored (such as cream) silks or taffetas.
(If you want to refresh your memory on color ideas such as monochrome, then go here.)
One of the marks of today's fashion is for sparsely furnished rooms, with natural wood floorboards, plaster effects on the walls, and with interest provided by items of color such as ornaments, pictures and flowers. If that's your living room, then consider using lots of sheers at the windows in soft colors. Even have them cascading onto the floor - they'll add softness and vitality to the room.
Do you like the effects of floor and table lamps at night, the way they create areas of light on walls and ceiling? If so, then think about using top drapes with your living room curtains. Lamp light on the deep folds will produce shadows and depth. Be sure to have a good amount of fullness in the curtains to match the drapes.
If you use patterned fabrics for your living room curtains, you can 'tie' the room together by using vases, flowers and pictures to bring out the accent colors in the fabric.
Some more points to consider for your living room curtains
- Would you want some form of valance or cornice box (pelmet) above the curtains? What about swags, tails etc? If so, is there enough room above the window(s) so the fabric doesn't come down too far below the top of the window?
- Would you have the curtains hanging straight down, or tied back in a gentle curve?
- How about lining and interlining your curtains and drapes?
- Would they finish below the sill, above a radiator (if there is one), just clear of the floor, or 'puddled' on the floor?
- Would you have them on pull-cords, or just draw them by hand?
- What about using a pole - wood, metal, painted wood finish to match the fabric?
- Make sure you allow enough room for the fabric to hang either side of the window so they draw back and don't block out too much daylight.
- Put enough fullness in your living room curtains - a minimum of double fullness is a good guide, otherwise they'll look flat and skimpy.
Floor length curtains are situated in each corner of this window. The flat valance using a patterned fabric and yellow trim completes the effect.
Tied back curtains hung from dark poles give a solid effect to this living room.
This set of curtains and valance bring the color of the rug into the window. The curtains are trimmed in the red, as is the valance which is suspended from a dark wood pole which itself provides contrast.
