All You Need to Know About Curtains

I have had a love/hate relationship with curtains. In my first home I went pretty neutral with my curtain choices because my paint colors were out of this world.

These were gorgeous! A shimmery silver that I'm guessing I found at Lowe's.

A nice subtle green in the master bedroom

{These pictures were taken before the invention of the iPhone... wow we have come a long way!}

In my second home I had a good mix of neutral curtains and some with patterns. The dining room had these amazing curtains from World Market. Probably my biggest splurge ever on curtains. Since our home was built in the 1860's, I was trying to keep with the theme and give it a classic look.

The living room had slightly off white curtains from IKEA that had a little pattern in them. This room was huge and needed 8 curtains! I wanted to have a subtle pattern in here because there were so many curtains. It would drown the room if I went too bold.

When looking at decorating blogs or house pictures for our new home, I realized I was loving the very neutral walls and neutral curtains with pops of color in pictures, flowers, or décor pieces. So I painted the walls a light gray color and got all white curtains.

One thing I want to share is a before and after picture of our windows without curtains and then our windows with curtains. If you notice the before, it looks and feels sterile. The room seems cold. However, once those curtains were added it made the room feel warm and also brightened up the space.

A good tip I have for you is where to place your curtains. You do not want to put them right on top of your trim. This is a mistake I've made in my past 2 homes. This makes the room feel smaller. You either want to put your curtains all the way up to the ceiling or halfway between the ceiling and trim. This helps bring your eyes up and make the ceiling seem taller and your room feel bigger.

In our dining room/living room area I really needed to go all the way to the ceiling because the window is slightly taller then the sliding door. This would make the halfway point different between the two and that would totally bug me since they are so close together. I love the floor to ceiling look so that is how all my curtains are.

Sources:
Wall Color: Balboa Mist by Benjamin Moore but color matched at Sherwin Williams
Curtains: Ritva from IKEA
Curtain Rods: Amazon