Bedroom Details — Window Privacy, New Curtain Rods, and Curtains Decision
Since our bedroom is on the front of our house, with a door that goes right to the front yard and two windows that look out to the side yard and our neighbor’s house, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to privacy. Obviously, we need privacy in a bedroom. But I always run into the same problem when it comes to areas that need to be private. I love natural light, and I hate blocking out natural light. So how do you have privacy without blocking out natural light.
In the rest of our house — the “non-private” areas — I never close the window shades. Our windows in our living room stay open 24/7. I figure maybe I’m preventing burglary that way. A would-be burglar can look in our windows, see that there’s nothing in there worth stealing, and move on. 🤣 But also, it’s just a hassle to open and close the window shades, so I leave them open all the time.
But obviously, a bedroom needs privacy. So I’ve spent weeks contemplating what I would do on our windows and the door in our bedroom. All three will have velvet curtains, which is pretty thick fabric. Plus, they’ll be lined with white lining so that they’ll be white from the outside. I know I’ve shown this a thousand times lately, but just as a reminder, this is the overall look that I’m going for…
In some rooms of our house (living room, breakfast room) we have lined, top-down/bottom-up shades. (You can find the details of those here.) Since our breakfast room has been our temporary bedroom during while I’m working on our bedroom suite, those shades have been pretty amazing. I like to have the sun shine through the windows as the sun comes up in the morning, so having that top-down function is perfect. It allows the sunlight to stream into the room early in the morning while also giving us plenty of privacy with the lined portion remaining closed on the bottom.
That’s the same shade that I have on the window in my walk-in closet, and I pretty much always keep it in the top-down position so that I can have natural light and privacy. The only time I open it from the bottom up is when I’m in there doing laundry.
But in other rooms (my studio, pantry, master bathroom, and bedroom), I have these shades (affiliate link). I love these shades so much. They’re a lot cheaper than the lined, top-down/bottom-up shades since they only open in one direction and they’re not lined. They do offer quite a bit of privacy, but sunlight also comes through them in the morning, so I know they don’t offer 100% privacy.
And while I used to have those on all three windows in the bedroom, now I only have them on the two windows and the door is fully see-through, offering no privacy at all. (Excuse the older photo. I don’t have updated photos yet.)
Anyway, I don’t want to put a shade on the door. I’m just not a “shade on the door” kind of person. But I also don’t want to put privacy film on the door because I really like being able to see out of that door when I want to. I may opt for privacy film in the future, but for now, I want to see if we can go without.
So I’ve been thinking about my options, and here’s what I finally decided. I’m going to use a layered approach so that I have options depending on how much light we want in the room at any given time. Here’s what I mean.
I’m going to keep the shades on the side windows. And then I’m going to reuse the sheer curtains that I used in here when the room was a home gym.
I loved those curtains so much. They do let light stream in, but they’re not quite like sheers. They’re thicker than sheer curtains while also kind of having that flowy, breezy, somewhat sheer look to them. When I took everything out of the home gym, they were too nice to get rid of, so I kept them, hoping I could find another use for them. And I just happen to have the right number of panels.
So I bought double curtain rods for the windows and the door. I can’t even remember the last time I used double rods (if ever), or the last time I did a layered look with curtains (if ever), so this is new ground for me.
It took me a while to find exactly what I wanted, but I finally decided on this curtain rod (affiliate link). I really liked the brackets, and I especially liked that the rods aren’t adjustable.
This curtain rod is very similar to the one I have in the studio. And while I like the one in the studio much better, it didn’t come in a double rod. But this is a close second.
Like I said, it’s not an adjustable rod, which I really like. Instead, on the longer rods (like this 8-foot one I got for the door), the pieces screw together in the middle.
So for the door, the velvet curtain panels will be 1 1/2 widths of fabric each, so that will be plenty for me to actually close the curtains at night for privacy.
And then on the windows, I think the combination of the shades plus the sheer curtains will be enough for privacy while still allowing some sunlight to come through in the morning. This room is the brightest room in the house in the early morning, so I’m really hoping this will work out.
We’ll see how it works out, but I’m excited about the idea of reusing those sheer curtains again. I also like the idea of bringing some white up to the upper portions of the walls so that it’s not too teal-heavy on the upper walls. I think that little bit of white sheer curtains showing will bring some much needed lightness up on the walls to break up all of that teal. So hopefully it works out the way I’m envisioning in my head.
I still didn’t get all of the trim done on Tuesday. UGH!!! I’m stuck in a never-ending loop of working on trim day after day after day. But I’m so close to being finished. I just keep reminding myself of that end goal to keep me focused. And I’m not only focused on the end goal, but on short term goals as well. As soon as all of the trim is painted, that means that all of the dusty and dirty projects are done. And as soon as that’s done, I plan to reward myself by bringing in the area rug and bedside tables. I don’t want to bring in too much because I still have to hang the grasscloth wallpaper, but if I can just see a couple of items in place, that will keep me motivated. So I’m keeping my eye on both that short-term goal, as well as that final reward of a beautiful, finished bedroom.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
The eight foot long rod seems awfully long for over the door. Do you need it that long to accommodate the stack back of the draperies? I would suggest having one or two people hold up the rods with drapes on them to be sure you like it before drilling holes into your grass cloth. I’m someone who has to see how things will look in the space before committing to it.
I think the length is needed in order to push the drapes back enough to open the door when needed.
Yes, drapery stack back is the amount of space draperies occupy when fully opened. It varies by the weight of the drapery fabric, use of interlining and lining fabrics. In this case, you would want the draperies to fully clear the door when opened in order to open the door.
Will you please link the lined shades as well? I’m looking for my bedroom and I absolutely love yours. Thank you.
The details of the lined shades are here: https://www.addicted2decorating.com/beautiful-new-woven-shades-in-my-breakfast-room-living-room.html
Thank you for curtain rod link. I am tired of my drapes getting caught every time I want to open them. Keep up the great work! It all is turning out very nice:)
I suggest giving some thought to motorized blinds controlled by a remote. I finally decided to invest in a very wide (90”) motorized blind in my living room after constantly stepping on or around the sofa to close the non-motorized blind behind it. I don’t regret my purchase for one moment. In addition, non-blackout blinds (not the bamboo/woven types) allow light to stream into the room in the morning while offering privacy at night. Multiple blinds can also be controlled by one remote.
This is what I was going to suggest. Although I do really like the idea of the white sheers breaking up the teal drapes against the teal wallpaper.
Sounds like a perfect solution. I can’t wait to see it. It is what we did in our master suite. I love layered drapes, always have, it’s what I grew up with. Slow and steady now, you’ve got this, and the race is almost over.
I think this idea will work out great. But my one thought is that the side windows by the bed are going to seem heavy with all of that going on. My thought is to use a single width panel (or even 2/3 rds.) of the velvet on each side of the windows to lessen the visual weight there. I would hope that with your double approach you can have the drapes just grazing the window frames at the side, to allow maximum light in! I love the use of the white semi-sheers! I have a linen-look on our living room windows (We have a triple window there with transoms.) I can close them to block the bright sun, but they still let in enough light so the room isn’t dark. Closed, they stack nicely along the frames of the windows. They’re from IKEA. I can’t wait to see the window treatments!
Just to note in case I missed it.
1.5 widths if pleated 2.5x would pleat down to about 30″ if doing a return. So that would be a 60″ rod with not much give at center for overlap.
Even pleated down to 2x fullness is about 40″ still not enough for a 96″ rod.
Should be able to cut down rods at the center and use a splice inside.
You may want to see how the velvet looks with lining if the sunlight with change the blue? Or use a white “blackout” lining to be sure.
Going to look great!
Have you found someone to hang the grasscloth.
I like the idea of shears and think the white will lighten up the room
It seems like a lot of heavy drapery in the room to me! My thought was to do a medium weight white canvas Roman blind right on the door. It will be plenty private (my mom has them on her front windows so can confirm), and still let in light, and can be raised if you want full sunbeams.
We have rental mini-cabins on our property, 5 in a group, and the glass door entrances just have a super simple $4 sash rod from Walmart at the top with a piece of printed cotton hung from it (slightly heavier than typical quilting cotton, but not heavy, more like a thick sheet), twisted up in a loop through itself to be “open” and just hanging down when closed. You can’t see into the cabins through it at night! Probably the pattern and color on these particular curtains help, but my point is that you could do with a lot less 🙂
You could do what we did for our house…. We installed frosted privacy cling film on every window at a height of right below my neck level, and kept the upper part clear. Now I can streak across the house whenever I want to! I don’t know if that kind of partially covered window treatment would drive you nuts, but it’s worked great for me!
One way mirror film will give privacy and allow you to see out and gives heat and fade protection. The privacy feature is reduced at night so would still need to be covered then. I have it on my south facing windows and love it.
Good morning,
You mentioned reusing your white sheers. Since I’ve been considering them for my own home, do you have a link for yours? Since yours are “Kristi approved” I’d feel more confident buying them.
Thanks.
Really like the rods. Question: Why do you like the rods that can’t be adjusted?