Blackout Curtain – That’s What I Want!
“I want a blackout curtain because I can’t sleep properly. I don’t want any gentle at all”.
Give me a penny for all the times I have heard that. I would be a millionaire by now (well I may be exaggerating a little) but you get the idea.
What I found is that most people don’t want their bedroom to be so dark that even during the day you can’t see your hand in front of your face.
What they actually want is a extremely darkish room, but still be able to get out of bed and make it to the bathroom without breaking their neck.
So how do you make your very dark room happen
No. 1 Put blackout linings into your curtains. (talk about stating the bloody obvious) If your good at sewing do it yourself. If not get a curtain maker to do it using your existing curtains or better still when making up your brand new curtains.
No. 2 Fit a valance or pelmet over the top of your curtains. Use a wooden top board to hang your curtains and top treatment from.
“Whats a top board” (will I ever get to the end of this article with all these interruptions!) Well it is a timber board usually 15 cm broad by 1.8 cm thick and as lengthy as your window is wide. It fixes to the wall over your window on simple “L” shaped shelf brackets. Usually set 15cm to 20 cm over your window. Your valance fits to the filter edge of the board with velcro tape and your curtain rails fix underneath the board. (now if were all ready can I carry on?)
This has 2 benefits.
First everything hangs better.
Second the board blocks the gentle coming out of the top of your curtains.
No. 3 Returning the outside edges of your blackout curtain back to the wall. What does that mean, well simply your curtains naturally hang on a curtain rail. The outside edges sit against the wall either side of your window. The only thing is that gentle can still leak through the small gap.
So to avoid this fit a pelmet board as above. Then before you hang your top treatment. Sort out the outside edges of your curtain. You need to screw a metal screw eye up into the underside of the top board. The metal screw eye must fix a couple of cm’s in from each end of the board and as close to the wall as possible.
Then hook the last curtain hook in the outside edges of your curtain into the metal screw eyes. This has the effect of taking the outside edges of your curtains right back to the walls blocking out almost all gentle from the sides of your curtains
No. 4 Your curtain rails are the next thing you can do something about. You need 2 curtain rails, both half the width of your window plus 15cm. So if your top board is 200cm lengthy then you need 2 rails at 115cm long.
Why 2 rails ? Well we are going to overlap them at the middle. You need to fix one rail towards the back of your top board and the other a few cm’s further forward. This allows your curtains when hung and closed to overlap and block out nearly all the gentle coming from the center of your curtains.
Well I hope this article helps you with your own window treatment project. The most important thing is to take your time and have some fun.
The author has written more about curtain rail fittings and curtain rail on his site, check them out: http://www.curtainrail.org/ and curtain rail fittings.
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