Interior Design with the Planet in Mind…Environmentally Friendly Custom Draperies

We all love a sunny day. A home with lots of large windows that bring the sunshine in is a very pleasant place to live. Interior furnishings, though, are soon damaged by the suns rays. It is always a good idea to cut down on incoming solar radiation in order to preserve valuable furnishings. Outgoing heat from our homes is something that we like to avoid in the winter and encourage in the summer. Even double glazed windows have very little R value and a lot of heat is lost in the winter through them. In summer, we want to enjoy the warm months after our long winter, but now we are too hot. Lining and interlining functional drapery panels can actually add some R value to the windows when closed. These multiple layers of drapery fabric assist in keeping some of the heat in in the winter and keeping the home cooler in the summer.In home décor projects involving drapery, the normal process is to choose a stunning face fabric and then line it with regular drapery lining and hang it on beautiful decorative drapery hardware. This is certainly adequate for décor, but the beauty of the draperies are actually enhanced by adding interlining between the face fabric and the regular lining. An ordinary drapery fabric is elevated to luxury status this way. The face fabric of the draperies actually hangs much better and a sense of luxury results. All this while helping our beleaguered planet out at least a little. Interlined custom draperies hang beautifully, and feel fabulous when touched. Flannel interlining adds richness to the fall of the drapery. It also adds an insulating factor to keep out the cold. Our homes here in Canada are generally fairly well insulated, but we still lose a lot of heat through bare windows. Bare windows may be a nice look in California, but we are not in California. Even in California it is desirable to prevent the home from becoming uncomfortably hot due to incoming solar rays. There are also acoustical advantages to interlining. In areas of high density housing in the inner city or in media rooms in large homes, it is advantageous to have sound control. In rooms that are tiled to the ceiling sound can be an issue. Kitchens look lovely with beautiful tile extending to the ceiling, now that upper cabinets are often not used. The room sounds hollow without soft materials to absorb noise. Conversation and the noise of food preparation can echo in a surprisingly harsh way. Mass produced drapery panels most often skimp on fullness and are often not even lined at all. Many times they are also much too short for the window. They hang like limp rags and add nothing to the décor of a home. They add so little to room décor that it would be better to leave the window unadorned. This is no way to treat a beautiful window!! By contrast, the elegant, formal custom draperies seen below add sophistication and presence to a room design.We recently did an interior design project for a busy young couple in west Oakville, near Burlington. They have two young children and need easy care design, but did not want to feel that they were living in a daycare. Essentially, they wanted their home to look nice even though they are in the throws of raising young children. Their sofas were still serviceable and not shabby, so we began with custom draperies and a paint colour consultation. We chose drapery fabrics that were in darker shades so that smaller amounts of soil would not be visible. It is not recommended to dry clean custom draperies unless absolutely necessary. They will never look as good as they did when they were new. Vacuuming is the only cleaning they should receive. We lined and interlined (with flannel) the draperies so they would hang luxuriously and installed them on beautiful modern decorative rods and rings. These draperies will look fabulous for years to come and will always lend a feel of luxury, as well as providing an insulating factor. We chose rich paint colours, one of which was a deep chocolate brown for the dining room. They love it and would never have dared to choose such a deep shade on their own. The colours enhance the decor and make their furniture look better than it did when the walls were beige.