Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Curtains for French Doors – Some New Ideas


There are several attractive styles of curtains for French doors. Your choice will depend on whether you need to cover the window sections to give privacy or whether you just want to dress the French doors with something that lets in the light and will pretty them up a little.

When total privacy is not important sheer net curtains made of voile or lace will make fresh-looking drapes. You can either allow them to hang freely or gather the curtains for French doors together at a half way point in the length and tie a pretty ribbon around the ‘waist’. You can use any color of ribbon to match your room décor and tie it into an elegant bow to finish it off nicely. This style also works well with gingham check cotton fabric which will give a French provincial touch to your décor.

Another attractive style of curtains for French doors is to hang them from the ceiling. To do this you first need to attach railings to the ceiling and then fit the curtains on. This creates a lovely romantic flowing fabric effect and will transform the whole room. Fine-weave white fabric or voile looks wonderful in this style but of course, any lightweight fabric will do.

In Europe it is very fashionable to have curtains for French doors that are made with a pocket at the top and the bottom. This allows you to slide the curtains over the curtain rods fixed at the top and the bottom of the door, so that they are taut. If you then want more light you can easily slide the curtains to one side or you can tie them in the middle with a cord or ribbon as described above. This method leaves you free to make your own curtains for French doors if you can sew and you can be quite creative, because you don’t need to use special curtain fabric. You can use a brightly colored silk length or natural muslin; the choices are endless. If you’re not very good at sewing, you can do the measuring at home and then take your fabric to a dry cleaning shop and they will sew the pockets for you. It’s quite a simple sewing job.

If you like to use natural materials in your home you can hang bamboo beaded curtains on French doors. Bamboo curtains will let in the light are very easy to attach to your doors. The beaded strands are fixed to a rail at the top and this has holes ready- made for screws, so all you need to do is to put a couple of screws through the holes and screw them into the top of the doorway. And this type of curtains for French doors is easy to adjust to fit because if the bamboo curtain is too wide you can easily cut a bit off with a small saw.

You can also buy all sorts of interesting fabric panels from Ikea which make lovely curtains for French doors and are very easy to attach. With a little work you can turn your French doors into a very attractive addition to your overall home décor.