July | 2014 | Your Home… Refined

Want an easy way to achieve a designer look in your living space? Pay attention to how you hang your drapery panels. A common designer trick is to hang drapery panels “high and wide” for maximum impact.

Take a look at this great illustration, which shows a rendering of drapes hung short and close verses those hung high and wide…

Source

Same window, buy very different look. Don’t you agree?

Hang ’em Wide

Extending the curtain rod three to six inches beyond the frame on each side provides many decorating “benefits”. Not only does it beef up a window’s focal point potential, it allows extra light to flood the room (especially important when staging a home for sale) as well as enabling a clear view of the outdoors. If you are lucky enough to have beautiful window mouldings, you can hang your drapery panels wide enough to show them off.

Hang ’em High

When you hang drapery panels closer to the ceiling line rather than at window trim height, it creates the illusion of grandeur in the form of a higher ceiling. Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourself…

Here’s another “Before” and “After” from my design files that illustrates the dramatic effect of this simple change…

In order to achieve this look, you’ll either have to modify standard 84″ panels by adding on a coordinating material to lengthen the panels (click here for a tutorial), or purchase 96″ drapery panels. Some great resources for purchasing 96″ panels include: West Elm, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Overstock.com, ZGallerie, and Target.

Although my preference is to hang the panels as high as possible, you can choose to hang them within a few inches of your ceiling line,or half way between the top of your window trim and your ceiling line. Whatever you choose, be sure that the bottom of the panels skim the floor.

Let me leave you with some additional examples that demonstrate how proper panel placement can add style and visual interest to your room!