When designing a House, I always advise clients on the importance of window treatments. Just like lighting and rugs, window treatments help to anchor a room and are an important investment. Beautiful window coverings are not only practical, but they can help to frame a room and bring in texture. Because quality window treatments can often represent a significant investment, I decided to reuse some curtains from our old house in our master bedroom and repurposed the curtains from the bedroom I designed for the Southern Style Now Showhouse for our dining room and living room in the new house by having them hemmed.

For our new house, we also partnered with The Shade Store, a fabulous designer resource that is also able to work with end consumers on some of the other spaces as well as for the grass Shades throughout the house. The Shade Store has showrooms in most major cities across the United States and they offer amazing customer service and an incredible array of options. You can use one of their thousands of fabrics or do COM (customer’s own materials) and their turn-around times are so quick for our industry!

We started the process by visiting The Shade Store showroom in the Houston Decorative Center. Loree Colon helped to guide us through the process showing us their numerous options of shades, draperies, hardware.

We opted for simple, black, wrought iron hardware. I don’t like for the hardware to detract from the draperies themselves, which in my opinion, should be the star of the show.

For the guest bedroom and my office, we opted for classic, linen pinch pleat drapes, but The Shade Store offers every style of draperies and curtain headings you could imagine.

Because we painted most of the rooms in our house white, I knew that it would be important to add texture and dimension through some great, grass shades. Our house is three stories and has huge windows that we love and didn’t want to obstruct. We also get lovely natural light, so while it was important to have something that would give us privacy in the evenings and add texture for aesthetic purposes, we wanted shades that would be easy to live with, but were afraid that traditional matchstick bamboo shades would feel too casual for the house. Loree guides us through the many types of shades– roman, roller, cascading, cellular, and pleated shades.

The previous owners had cellular shades and pleated lining curtains. We lived with the cellular shades for about a month before our new window treatments were installed. They were very easy to operate and were very lightweight, which was a plus, but they didn’t offer the texture that I felt was needed.

Our living room isn’t quite ready–these chairs are only here until my new sofas come in, but you can see what a difference the new window treatments make! We ended up going with Cascade Grassweave Shades in Hemp with a Privacy Lining. While I liked the hardware that the former homeowners had, it felt a little cramped on the windows, so I had new hardware made and extended it about ten inches further past the window on either side. You’ll notice that the shades are also hung above the window, just below the curtain rod to eliminate any negative space and draw the eye up. These are the draperies from the showhouse which were cut down for me by my local workroom. I was in New York when they were installed. I asked for a 1″ break, but I feel like they’re puddling a bit more than that and will likely raise everything just a tad.

We used the same window treatment in our dining room.

Another view of the dining room which isn’t quite finished yet either!

In case you are wondering what the shades look like when they are lowered, I took this photo at night. They look very tailored and are on a continuous loop mechanism, so they’re super easy to raise and lower. The shades are meant to be lowered all the way down, but Tate is a bit of a snoop and I have to leave a little space open at the bottom so that he can watch the squirrels and birds outside the windows.

The former homeowners had faux wood blinds and roman shades in the master bedroom.

You’ll notice we placed our bed facing the windows instead. As I mentioned earlier, we used the draperies from the family room in my old house in our new bedroom. The length was actually perfect and I was so happy to be able to use these beauties again! Even though there are so many gorgeous, colorful tape trims out there, this is a testament to why it is a great idea to go with classic, neutral fabric and trim on something like curtains because they can move forward with you and can work with whatever surrounds them in the room.  I also think that adding the curtains to the shades unifies the look and ties everything together a bit more.

We used the same Cascade Grassweave Shades in Hemp with a Privacy Lining in our master bedroom. However, we opted for the cordless mechanism since they are much narrower windows. The cordless option is super easy to use and looks very neat since there are no cords. I also love the way the light filters through the shades, especially in the morning.

I like to switch up the decor in our guest bedroom every now and then, so I opted for simple, ivory linen drapes with a pinch pleat and black wrought drapery rod and ring hardware. The look is tailored and classic and will go with all of the future iterations of the space.

The former homeowners had faux wood blinds in the room I am using as my office.

My office has white walls and leopard carpet. To add a graphic touch, we repeated the hardware and shades in here, but added black linen contrast banding to the leading edge and bottom of the curtains.

I am so thrilled with the way the window treatments turned out. They make each room feel much more polished and finished. I am so grateful to the team at The Shade Store, especially Loree Colon who went above and beyond for us! She came to our house to measure everything precisely along with the installer, offered so many great suggestions, and made sure that we received our order in a very timely manner. If you are in the market for new window treatments, I’d highly recommend that you visit your local The Shade Store showroom because chances are, they’ll have exactly what you are looking for!

{This post is generously sponsored by The Shade Store who graciously supplied the aforementioned materials. All opinions are genuinely my own.}

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