Finishing Off Our Space with Dining & Living Room Drapery

There is quite a story behind this drapery.

When we first looked at our house and I fell promptly in love with it (who wouldn’t jump at the chance to live on a lake!), I made a lot of promises to the hubs about it. I said things like “It’s perfect – we don’t even need to paint”. Hahaha. And “I promise I won’t hang drapes”. Bwahahaha.

Well, for some reason the hubs has some issues with drapes.

I think I traumatized him in our previous home with the large scale strong vintage floral print drapes that I made for our dining room (they were AH-MAZE-ing!).

So now he has a condition known as Drape-a-phobia. It is defined in the DSMV-IV as a strong fear or dislike of drapery, curtains, and hanging window treatments. There is no known cure at this point.

Anyhow, I lived without drapes for 3.5 years because of my promise to him. 3.5 years people. That’s like a lifetime to a toddler!  And come on, an anti-drapery promise is not like a wedding-day promise, am I right? It is a meant-to-be-broken promise. Drape-a-phobia or not.

I knew we desperately (#1stworldproblems) needed drapes to finish off our space. And after my long-winded search I found THE PERFECT ones online at Kirklands. They are called Aqua Gatehill and are the 95″ length. I. LOVED. THEM. I knew they would be the perfect finishing touch to our room.

Now just to convince the hubs… these are the reasons I came up with for why you should consider using dining and living room drapery to finish off your space:

1) They are perfect for tying together a colour scheme in a room

The Aqua Gatehill drapes we chose for our living and dining room have a beautiful aqua-blue pattern on a burlap-y toned background. The aqua ties in perfectly with the rest of the blues that we have in the room, and the burlap toned background works perfectly with our sisal rugs and beige linen dining chairs. You can choose a patterned drape that ties in the colour scheme you are going for… or select something more solid and neutral in colour to complement a more neutral décor scheme. Either way- they are the finishing touch to a design scheme.

2) They are a vertical element – so they can add height to your space 

Drapery is often one of the only strong vertical elements going on in a space – they draw your eye upwards and make a space feel taller – as long as they are hung correctly. Make sure you get drapes that are tall enough! Many companies sell drapes that are only 84″ high. These may work for some spaces – but you don’t want your drapes hanging a couple of inches above the floor. Unless in a child’s bedroom or other, more casual, space I think that drapes should touch the floor so they don’t look hokey and dated. For the most impact, make sure that they will hang well above your window trim. The Aqua Gatehill panels  that I ordered from Kirklands are 95″ in length. This way, we were able to hang our rods rod close to the ceiling and it added height and drama to the windows.

3) They are great for preventing heat-loss in the winter and over-heating in the summer – thus saving you money on your energy bills

This was the major sell for the hubs – we have these new 9′ glass doors in our dining room and despite the fact that they are “energy-efficient”, the room heats up considerable on any sunny day. And it has been winter! Just wait until the HEAT of summer hits – we will actually need to close these babies come July and August. 4) If you love fabric, they are the best and largest place to use a fabric you love in your space. 

A patterned drape can have a beautifully strong presence in your room, or a simple linen or other textured material drapery panel adds brilliant texture to your space. Both pattern and texture are ways to add interest to your décor.

5) They are a fabulous design element!

They can be as dramatic as you want – with a strong fabric like I have chosen in these panels from Kirklands. Or as subtle and soft as you want – with a simple light fabric. But whatever your choice, drapes definitely add drama and interest to your space – and that is the main reason to choose them! Have you thought about going FAKE??

I you have a really long window in your room, you may wish to consider hanging only side panels.

In our living room, we have a 12 foot window spance. It is actually three windows, and they all have working wooden blinds if we want privacy (we never close them- we are really exhibitionist like that). So I knew that the drapes didn’t need to actually CLOSE. I ordered two panels for each side of the window, and hung them on smaller rods – they work to finish off and cozy up the living room without needing to purchase an expensive LOOONG rod. The smaller rod we used… (a 24-48″ size) Faking it…

What do you think? Did these gorgeous panels finish off our space, or what?

I am so thrilled that I got to collaborate with Kirkland’s on this project- you may have seen a sneak peak at our beautiful new drapes first, in my Spring Home Tour. I truly feel like they “made the room”. I am super thrilled with the quality of the fabric, and the price of drapery panels from Kirklands was amazingly reasonable (two 40″ panels retail for $39.99 and I got mine on sale for $31.99 – amazeballs!). I could not have made these for anywhere near what they cost to buy. And it saved me HOURS of time. You know what they say, time is money.