How can I hang curtains on this Edwardian bay window?

dominoman

When we moved in to this house the lounge had IKEA venetian blinds and I've long wanted to replace them with curtains to help it feel more cosy, but I'm struggling on how best to fit them.

The bay has a window to left and right sides, and is three windows across. There is a lower arch that separates the bay from the room.

If I hang normal curtains then I know that a lot of light will be blocked from the side. I've considered roman blinds, but is it a pain to open 5 sets every day? Plus I don't think they look as cosy as curtains.

There's some photos below (not very good quality) but gives you the idea.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86577895/2016-04-03%2016.45.33.jpg

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86577895/2016-04-03%2016.45.43.jpg

How would you hang curtains here?

phil24_7

I would personally curtain outside of the archway. It'll be much easier, won't block any light and will feel much cosier once they are closed.

EssexExile

You could hang the curtains outside the bay, the room side of the arch (not in the garden!). It would warm up the room without cutting out any light.

pickledonionspaceraider

If it were me, I wouldn't want to cover up the archway by curtaining it off, as it is such a lovely feature and the curtains will cut it off from the rest of the room

I would get some very nice blinds to hang - the ones you have at the minute are clinical looking and not very homey - but there are loads of lovely ones on the market now

Cisco001

Get curtain track and hang inside the bay

PasturesNew

Fix the curtain hangings from the ceiling, then follow the line of the windows round, with the curtain rod/poles having enough length (behind 1' of the arch on each side) to be able to tug the curtains right the way back.

dominoman

Yes the idea of hanging on the room side is appealing and would be simpler, but it would mean losing the view of the arch, which I quite like.

I hadn't thought of the idea of using the space behind the arch to tuck curtains into. That could work. So rather than just tucking to the left and right they would almost swing around 180 degrees at the end. I wonder if a curtain track could handle that tight a curve?

Le_Kirk

If you hang curtains straight across the arch, you will lose the benefit of the radiator. Another vote for curtain track inside against the window and you will be surprised how much of a bend curtain track will take, although probably not the sharp angles you have so you may have to compromise.

dominoman

The radiator will be a problem however we do it, unless we go for sill length curtains rather than floor length. I'd kind of accepted that compromise because we have a log burner, so at night when the curtains are drawn we could live without the radiator.

However, the bigger problem for me with curtains is still the loss of light when they're drawn back. They will block a large part of the side windows and one of those is the south facing side. I'm coming around to the idea of roman blinds, perhaps with a voile behind them for privacy.

Downsides of the roman blinds is it is more of a pain to raise and lower them, and I dont think they look as cosy as thick floor length curtains.

peachyprice

I would have wooden plantation shutters made for that window, it's such a pretty little space curtains/fabric blinds would spoil the whole look for me.

DaftyDuck

I had a very similar, slightly larger, window in my last house. I used the flexible curtain rail, much like Cisco001 posted the link to, and I used four curtains. When opened, curtains hung at base of archway, window-window corner, window-window corner, and base of archway. Each curtain had a self-supporting tieback, to contain the curtain. It looked very elegant.

The main technical difficulty with that kind of curtain rail is getting it to fit exactly, and smoothly. Runkles and ruffles in the rail make the curtain run rough. I think we ended up using a hairdryer and iron/ironing board to flatten ours out, and I think we used something to force a smooth curve for each corner before fitting it up... something like a bucket to curve it, maybe a saucepan. I know it helped enormously, when we worked out how to force it to shape.