You want your home to look great. You’ve arranged everything and hanged some pretty frames. But it just doesn’t feel good enough. It’s the windows. You’ve got to do something about it but all those technical terms and hundreds of options leave you all confused and baffled. Well, here’s some professional help made simple just for you.

What is the room for? What do want from your window treatment? Are you going for casual, formal, or classic? Do you want to welcome more sunlight into the room or just get some privacy? Asking yourself these basic questions will lay the foundation for the rest of your choices.

Remember these simple solutions to common window treatment predicament:

• Is your window too narrow? Hanging draperies on both sides, exposing as much glass in the middle as possible would make the window seem wide. Just make sure you’re covering the frame to make it look like there’s still more glass hiding behind those curtains.
•  If your window is too wide, you can keep it from overpowering the whole room by making it look narrower. You can achieve this look by breaking up the whole window space with several curtain panels. You can tie back your curtains in pairs or simply let them hang straight for privacy. When you place several panels close to each other, you create an illusion of a narrower window because it would look like you’re using only one two panels when in fact you’re using more.
• If your window looks short, you could hang a long curtain that spans from just below the ceiling molding down to the floor.
• If it’s too long, adding a deep cornice or valance would add the necessary horizontal pattern to deemphasize the vertical aspect.

Which Type of Curtain and Draperies Should you Get for your Home?

•   For the living room, get some semisheer curtains to allow natural light into the room. Letting some sunlight in would give the living room the brightness it needs. Choose the thickness of the curtain’s fabric according to how much light you want in the room and the level of privacy you need.
•  If you’re a nocturnal person, you might want some blackout curtains to keep the blaring sun from disturbing your daytime sleep and naps. Blackout curtains will also be a great help when you have a baby in the room. You could put your little one to sleep much easier if you have the option of keeping the sunshine from brightening the whole room. If you’re looking for absolute darkness, you could install long drapes which cover the entire window, extending its width to almost two feet beyond both sides of the window.
• For rooms requiring maximum privacy such as the first floor bathroom, you may use a cellular shade. This lets some natural light into the bathroom while giving you all the privacy you need. Another reason why cellular shades are best for bathrooms lies in its honeycomb design, which helps you feel comfortably warm in the room while blocking the cold from the outside.
• For bedrooms in the first floor where the next level of privacy is needed, some contemporary draperies would be great. These floor-to-ceiling curtains let you enjoy some sunshine when you want it without compromising your privacy. You could close the windows with your draperies and they would still let some sunshine in.

Using stained glass is another way of letting some natural light into the room without compromising privacy. They’re usually installed around the front door to brighten the area while preventing passersby from seeing the interior of your home.