What is drapery width is one of the most frequent questions we are asked. Drapery width is a behind the scenes technical term used in the workroom for how much fabric is needed to start a drape or curtain fabrication. However, the term is often used by industry professional in conversations with their clients. We also use the term for ordering decorative drapes or panels in specific departments on our site.

Fabric is manufactured by the mills and the machinery used to make decorative fabric for drapes and home decor is primarily 54″ wide. So when we speak of a width of fabric, we are talking about 54″ wide. In making drapes, 8″ of the 54″ is needed for the hems on both sides, so we are left with 46″ of face fabric. Then in the fabrication of the drape, we use a minimum of 2 to 1 fullness to create the beautiful drape header. That simply means if you want a finished drapery panel to be 50″ wide, we will need 100″ of face fabric or two widths of fabric (54″ x 2 widths = 108″ less 8″ for hems = 100″).

Fortunately, you as the customer do not need to know the gory details of how the workroom determines the width and the math behind it. However, when you order decorative drapes on our site where we use width specifications, you should know what the finished product is going to look like. Below you will find the finished width measurement for common decorative sizes. We have also provided a chart to help you determine what width is right for your particular window.

Finished Drapery Width

1 Width Panel – the finished width of a single 1 width panel is approximately 20″ to 27″ wide. The width of two panels (pair) is approximately 40″ to 54″ wide.

1-1/2 Width Panel – the finished width of a single 1-1/2 width panel is approximately 25″ to 40″ wide. The width of two panels (pair) is approximately 50″ to 80″ wide.

2 Width Panel – the finished width of a single 2 width panel is approximately 36″ to 54″ wide. The width of two panels (pair) is approximately 72″ to 108″ wide.

Window Size Recommendations
Below is a general guideline for ordering the right drapery width for your window sizes. If your window is outside these measurements, stationary panels will still work, but you may want to call us to discuss your project.

We often get asked if it is “ok” to use one pair of drapes on two separate windows on the same wall. Well the answer is yes. Many decorators would only consider a pair of panels for each window, however, we believe one pair for both windows not only saves you money, but they look terrific.

Our favorite look for this situation is shown in the picture below. By pulling the drapes back, you create a swag effect and it frames the two windows very nicely. The insider tip here is the 12″ rule. If you have more than 12″ of wall space between the windows, you should pull them back as shown. If you have less than 12″ of wall space you can opt not to use the drapery tie-backs and have them hang straight down. Many custom drape styles such as pinch pleat, rod pocket, goblet pleat look great with drapery tie-backs. The room setting below show an elegant silk fabric in a rod pocket drape style using beautiful tassel tie-backs. A pinch pleat drape in nearly any fabric would work equally as well in this room setting. We highly recommend using drapery tassel tie-backs for a very decorative accent to your custom window treatments.

If you are looking for a window treatment for your French doors, you have come to the right place.  Fabricworkroom.com offers many options to treat your French doors from fabric roman shades to  wood blinds to roller shades and bamboo woven shades.

Based on your budget and your personal style here is a quick guide to selecting the best custom window treatment for your French Door. Note: this is a general guide and all style pricing is based on price of fabric selected.

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When you are about to begin your decorating project and selecting your window treatments, just getting started can be an overwhelming experience. Where do you begin? I suggest you go to one of the large chain book stores. They carry most of the decorating publications and the owner won’t scold you for “reading” them in the store. You’ll have a few dozen to pick from. Flick through the ones that reflect your style and taste. Magazines can be very inspiring but don’t get too nervous. These are all staged for inspiration only. It’s not natural. You don’t see dog bowls, television remotes or kid’s dirty socks. Magazine shoots have a team of people who work on the scene staging. However, you can recreate what you see – at a fraction of the cost of hiring a decorator.

Understanding what you want to accomplish with your window treatments can help you narrow done the choices. Here are the questions you need to answer:

• Do I need privacy or decorative?
• Do I need light control?
• Do I want a layered look? (Multiple treatments on one window)
• What window treatment styles do I want? (formal, casual, contemporary, etc.)
• Do I want silk, faux silk, cotton, linen, or blended fabrics?

The room that you are decorating will help you answer many of these questions. If you are decorating a living or dining room, you might lean towards formal. If it’s your family room, you should be thinking more casual with light control for your media center. Your bedroom can be casual or formal, but privacy should be at the top of your list. If you have young children, room darkening should be important for afternoon naps.

Budget is also a strong factor in your decision. We have put together a simple chart as a guide. We are using a typical window that is 35″ wide by 58″ long. For pricing fabric products, we selected a popular cotton print that can work in just about any room setting. We haven’t added any of the different product upgrades and options such as trim to make this easier to present.

Here is the conclusion. You should create a window treatment budget for each room in the house. Generally speaking, the public rooms on the first floor are where you should invest the most. Your friends will see these rooms and when they are talking behind your back, it just might be positive. Upstairs you can focus on shade and blind options that give you privacy and light control at a great price. To add fabric to a shade or blind window treatment, we recommend adding a fabric rod mounted valance. They look great and there are many styles available for under $100. Remember this can all be done in stages. Set your priorities and stick to a plan.

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Did you ever have one of those moments when you were in your bathroom minding your own business and then there is it – someone was looking in your window? Perhaps it was the lawn guy or Fed Ex delivery guy. You’re embarrassed, he’s embarrassed and you vow to never let that happen again.

So why did this happen? With the exception of flying visitors from Transylvania, most of us love sun light. We leave our windows uncovered so the light streams in. It’s much easier to get the motor running in the morning with beautiful natural sun light. Many studies have proven that people become more depressed in the winter due to lack of natural light. So completely blocking the sun light to get privacy is not a good idea. You need a window treatment that will give you both sun and privacy. Well guess what, there are solutions where you can have both.

Window shades and blinds are all about privacy and light control. You need to pick the best window treatment for each room and even make small adjustments within the room. There are so many styles and options that guarantee a perfect solution. With our guidance you’ll know all the options and make smart choices and eliminate the mistakes.

The trickiest room to get right is the bathroom. Privacy is important, but you have to consider some natural light for the ladies to apply their make up. Add an abundance of moisture and you’ve got the bathroom version of the perfect storm. Immediately strike wood blinds from the list. They will peal and crack over time. If you love the look of wood, then faux wood is the way to go. They are made of composite materials and moisture won’t cause any damage. However, when they are closed you can forget about any light. Thus, we would rule out faux wood blinds if you still want light when they are closed.

We strongly recommend that you focus your window treatment choice on top-down-bottom-shades. You can raise the shade from the bottom of the window up to any desired position. You end up with extraordinary privacy while letting in natural light in from the opening at the top. Neighbors and delivery people may get a peak at your curlers, but not much else. Shades and blinds with this feature include cellular honey comb shades, bamboo shades and fabric roman shades.

Fabric Roman Shades are beautiful and with thousands of fabrics available, these shades can become the center point of your bathroom style. The flat roman shade style comes in a top down option as well. Bamboo shades are very stylish and their natural look is very in vogue today. We love the function of cellular shades, but they can be a little plain looking on their own. We recommend you consider adding a fabric valance to add softness and color while concealing the shade when it is up. Finally, if you have windows that are hard to reach say behind a jetted tub, you might want to consider motorization. You can raise and lower the shades using a small remote. The shade motor is powered by battery, so you don’t need to worry about running wires.

Remember, making the right choices for your bathroom windows will give you great light, privacy and beauty.

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Let’s say you walk into the family room and your husband is sitting on the couch watching his favorite Sunday sports. You announce to him, “honey we need a new state-of-the-art flat screen television”. How fast do you think you’d be in the car on your way to Best Buy? Does a New York minute sound about right? Now let’s try another scenario same setting. “Honey, I think we need new drapes for the living room and while we are at it, we should get some accent pillows to match”. What do you think is response is going to be? Yep – dead silence. He’s thinking what’s in it for me? What’s this going to cost? The benefits of a new television are completely different than the benefits of new drapes. He’s thinking about how versatile and inexpensive sheets can be. What he doesn’t know is, it will cost less to buy the drapes than the flat screen, especially by shopping on the Internet, but he won’t get it. It’s not his passion. Don’t despair; you can get his support with the right approach.

We don’t like paying for stuff when we can’t figure out how the price was calculated. Everyone hates to overpay, but a man’s ego can be crushed if they get taken. Hiring a decorator can scare a guy more than the IRS. The decorating world has a tendency to be unaccountable. It’s difficult to compare pricing with private label fabrics and unknown labor rates and hourly fees. You don’t get to know the final price until the decorator has been in your home two or three times over a few weeks. They befriend you over the weeks, comment on your lovely children and become part of the “family”. When you get hit with the price, it can be a very uncomfortable situation with your new best friend – sorry I mean your decorator. As a husband, the last thing I want to hear is that “it seems expensive, but I really like her”.

You can go the retail route. I am sure your husband is dying to spend his weekends in home décor retail stores. Retail can mean a few visits to the store and visits by the retailer’s measuring people to your home. It can be very time consuming. You ever see those guys sitting on benches outside the stores? Yep, drape shopping.

Let’s face it; you are never going to make him passionate about drapes. The ridicule approach is not going to get it done. Comments about not being fully evolved and knuckle dragger won’t inspire a love for fabric and drapes. Don’t tell him how your friend’s husband was very involved when she decorated her home. You know where that’s going. So if you can’t criticize or bagger him into submission, what do you do? Here are some suggestions based on being a guy who believes the screen isn’t big enough or flat enough!

1. Be up front and tell him that you are going to do the drapes in the living room. Let him know you are 100% committed to looking at alternative ways to do this project. Your goal is to have beautiful drapes made without eating into his weekends and overpaying. Tell him that thousands of people are successfully using the Internet to decorate their homes and you are going to do all the initial research. However, you want his help to pick the right drape style and the right fabric. Let him know that all the pricing on the Internet is known right up front without any sales pressure. No scary end of job hourly time bills and no comments on how lovely your children are.

2. Start your Internet research. Do a google search on “Custom Window Treatments” and check out the companies. Look at the drape styles. Narrow the choice down to two or three styles. Look at the fabrics you like and price out your drapes. Print out the detail with the prices and show them to your husband. Pick the right time. Don’t try to get his attention when the game is going into double overtime. Trust me, he will appreciate knowing the price up-front and in all likelihood start to embrace the process. Ask for his help in deciding on the drape style. Get his input on the fabrics you are considering.

3. There is a measuring component to the project. You should print out the measuring instructions. Get your husband’s help measuring. It is his chance to put on his tool belt and strut his handyman stuff. “Step aside Miss while I take care of this”. It’s okay to tell him that when it comes to measuring, he is second to none. Did I mention that we have huge egos and love to hear how great you think we are?

4. Look though the thousands of fabrics on-line. Narrow it down to your color, style and texture you prefer. Order free swatches. Don’t order too many, it just makes the process more confusing. Once the swatches arrive, immediately eliminate the ones that don’t work for you. Don’t show your husband any fabric you hate because that’s the one he’ll love. Work together to decide on the final choice. Don’t accept the “you make the choice” typical husband position. It’s better to get his opinion now rather than when the drapes arrive. Believe it or not, sometimes men can be a little insensitive. He could walk in the room when the drapes arrive and say something completely manly and insulting like “at least the measuring is right”. If you carefully engage your husband in this process, just for a second, imagine if he picks a fabric you love and you can say, “Wow, you have great taste, that’s the exact one I was leaning towards”. We are talking dinner date with that kind of talk.

So imagine, your husband being completely supportive and involved in the process. He didn’t have to deal with a decorator and the unknown. He didn’t have to spend his weekends in a retail home décor store. You both completed a great project together and you saved a lot of time and money in the process.

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Southport, CT: Travel, computers, books and now home decorating is part of the latest Internet buying trend as consumers tighten their belts to save money in a soft economy. In increasing numbers homeowners are looking to the Internet for products and advice for “do-it-yourself” home decorating on web sites such as www.fabricworkroom.com

According to Kyle Keehan Co-founder of FabricWorkroom.com, “We are basically hearing three reoccurring statements from our customers. One, they are grateful that they can save by shopping for window treatments and other custom products on-line. Two, they are selling their homes in a soft real estate market and staging them to be more competitive. And lastly, some customers have postponed selling and want their homes nicely decorated for more in-home entertaining with friends and family.”

Fabricworkroom.com sells to consumers by giving direct access to their vast amount of product styles and designer fabrics. All the products including window treatments, upholstered headboards, luxury bedding, shower curtains and pillows are custom made to the customer’s exact specifications. The process from order to completion is four weeks or less saving tremendous time and money over traditional retail decorating options. “A FabricWorkroom.com customer can literally visit our web site, custom design silk drapes to the exact size they need and have them hanging in their living room in four weeks. There just aren’t that many places where consumers can do this today”, said Keehan.

Customers get unlimited Design Team help when working on their home decorating projects. Fabricworkroom.com’s experts are there to make sure the customer is measuring correctly and picking the right fabrics and products. “We go above and beyond to give our customers a variety of tools to ensure their project goes smoothly. We have extensive product guides on the web site and we give them unlimited advice by phone, email or in a live chat session. We stock nearly 6,000 fabrics in our workroom ranging from solid cottons to embroidered silks and everything in between. Fabrics are purchased in large quantities ensuring the best prices from the mills. Our large in-house inventory speeds delivery time while nearly eliminating backorders, that plague the industry”, said Keehan.

The Internet has changed many industries in the last 10 years. Most travelers use the Internet to research and plan their business and vacation trips. All the schedules and rates are widely available on many trusted web sites. Consumers are getting the best itinerary at the best price. As a result of the new frugality that has set in with consumers, in greater numbers they are embracing the Internet for home decorating and realizing significant savings.

About FabricWorkroom.com

FabricWorkroom.com is every consumer’s resource for custom home decorating. The company stocks thousands of imported and domestic fabrics for manufacture of custom window treatments, upholstered headboards, luxury bedding, pillows and more for the consumer market. With nearly 1,000 people working behind the scenes, FabricWorkroom.com ensures the highest level of selection, style and superior workmanship. For more information, please visit http://www.fabricworkroom.com.

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