We live in a open concept style home, which means we have to make sure everything in the “uni-room” doesn’t clash. Some people call it a great room, but I like uni-room. The dining room, kitchen, living room, and front hall are all one open area. From our old apartment, we had two valances. One had been from our kitchen, and one from the office. Now the valances are in the new house are about seven feet apart on different windows, and they don’t really go together. Also, our apartment was in fiestaware colors, and our new place is more formal in the color palatte of the counters and walls. I almost forgot the double sliding door that is embarrassingly naked, and is about ten feet away from those windows.
I recently came across a suggestion that you use bed sheets to create window treatments. I tried this once, and ran into some problems. They looked like Strawberry Shortcake and kokopelli took scrubs from a children’s hospital nurse. Or, they looked like we stole them from our bed, plain and simple. Sometimes bed sheets just look like bed sheets and are too theme-y.
The answer for me may be in getting some custom valances so things don’t look so slapdash. I like things that coordinate without being matchy matchy, but they can’t look like our home is a tent in the Sahara, thanks to our white bedding.
This one reminds me of the furniture store I worked at a few years back. Similar items with butterscotch check mixed with the pattern was paired with a painted ceramic rooster and majolica spaniels. It really pulled the fake room together. There was a customer at that store that I really remember well. She didn’t understand that “custom” meant you picked out the fabric from what they had, the fringe, and the style/dimensions. It does NOT mean that you can choose from something that doesn’t exist at any fabric mill in the entire world, like 2×3 inch raspberry colored Indian elephants with a green polka dot background. She didn’t want the beige fabric with the African elephants because that species have larger ears, and she wanted small eared elephants, because it looked too “safari”. I am not making this up.
Our friends at Priority Windows are having a sale right now, where you can get 10-20% off of your order depending on what you spend. There are five bajillion (translation: over 470) fabrics, so you should be able to find something. You can create custom window treatments in the style and fabric you choose.
If you are like me and want something that is luxe, but are flexible, they have semi-custom treatments. You get fewer choices, but you end up with something that looks like it was hundreds of dollars! I initially looked at the custom choices and I was multiplying the price by the number of windows in my head and it sounded pretty unobtainable. When I flipped over to the semi-custom stuff, it is very doable instead of having to save up.
Do you have a “uni-room?” If so, what did you do with the window treatments? Did you get something custom for all the different sized windows? Is every window different? Or, did you strike gold with another idea?
| 3.8 (2 people) |
