Finding the Right Fabric for Your Shades and Curtains

Finding the Right Fabric for Your Shades and Curtains

Fabric window treatments provide you with an opportunity to elevate your interior design with bold color choices and unique decorations while also softening the room’s décor and helping you control the light and heat in your spaces. When it comes to deciding on individual choices and on the best combination of curtains and shades, it is important to understand the different fabric choices available and how their properties of these fabrics change the performance of your curtains and shades. In a climate like the one here in Albuquerque, those choices can greatly change your room’s energy performance.

Right Fabric for your Curtains

Fabric Window Treatment Materials

All About Blinds recommends that our clients choose from the following fabrics, as they tend to be the ones that hang and fall the best:

• Linen
• Silk
• Faux Silk
• Velvet

Depending on what you want to do with your window treatments and what season they are made for, the choices can make quite a bit of difference. Velvet tends to be heavy, and to provide a good deal of insulation, making it ideal for blackout curtains, especially in winter, when you want to keep the heat in. Silk tends to be middle weight, as is faux silk, and they work well in fabric shades that are designed to block light while remaining stunningly beautiful. Last but not least, linen choices tend to be lightweight, and they breathe well, making them an ideal choice for filtering light into a room while still maintaining your privacy.

Texture and Visual Appeal

Choosing fabric curtains and window shades is about more than just the material, though. Different designs for window treatments provide different levels of benefit, and matching the right design with the right material is the key when choosing a window treatment that is both stylish and functional.

Understanding how Roman shades differ from traditional curtains, for instance, helps you to understand how the design of the shades and their coverage across the window will affect the light and heat coming in, as well as the level of control you have over how far they open or close. Finding the best fit is a matter of understanding what your needs are and what you want the new treatments to accomplish, so there is no one right answer to it.