Curtains, Tracks & Poles help

bery_451

Hi,

I have a wooden batten already on top of the bedroom window.

Can poles go on battens or it has to be tracks?

Does the track or pole has to be same length as batten? The batten is approx 15cm wider than the window on both sides.

Apart from tracks and poles is there any other way to hang up curtains?

What type of curtains are suitable for tracks and what curtains are suitable for poles?

When buying curtains what measurements do I take?

Murmansk

Curtain poles tend to be attached at three specific points, one at either end and one in the middle. This can sometimes present problems if there's a metal lintel in the wall just where you want to put your bracket.

If someone has already put a wooden batten up then the hard work has been done in that you can attach stuff to wood more easily than you can to a brick wall.

If the batten is a bit longer than the window is wide then you could attach a pole or a track to it.

The kind of curtains suitable for a track generally have a tape at the top that has places where you insert curtain hooks and those hooks attach to runners on the track. Some kinds of curtains have tabs at the top designed to slide along a curtain pole, some are designed to attach to a pole by having big round holes in which are reinforced by metal.

When you measure a curtain, you need to allow for the fact that the curtain has folds in it so you need the curtain to be 1.5 to 2 times bigger in width than the amount of window it needs to cover.

Hope some of this is of help

bery_451

Murmansk wrote: »

Curtain poles tend to be attached at three specific points, one at either end and one in the middle. This can sometimes present problems if there's a metal lintel in the wall just where you want to put your bracket.

If someone has already put a wooden batten up then the hard work has been done in that you can attach stuff to wood more easily than you can to a brick wall.

If the batten is a bit longer than the window is wide then you could attach a pole or a track to it.

The kind of curtains suitable for a track generally have a tape at the top that has places where you insert curtain hooks and those hooks attach to runners on the track. Some kinds of curtains have tabs at the top designed to slide along a curtain pole, some are designed to attach to a pole by having big round holes in which are reinforced by metal.

When you measure a curtain, you need to allow for the fact that the curtain has folds in it so you need the curtain to be 1.5 to 2 times bigger in width than the amount of window it needs to cover.

Hope some of this is of help

Ok from my understanding I require a pair of curtains for each window and each of the pair must be x1.5 or x2 bigger in width than the window width?

Can I get poles that won't protrude from the wall that much?

Or is typically poles protrude more than tracks?

Doozergirl

Poles protrude more so that you maximise light in the day.

If you can afford 2x width, then buy that. It makes a difference.

bery_451

Doozergirl wrote: »

Poles protrude more so that you maximise light in the day.

If you can afford 2x width, then buy that. It makes a difference.

Ok so a pole on a wooden batten will protrude it even more I guess.

Any poles you know that don't protrude that much?

Or shall I just stick to a track?

whatsthenews

When you say protrude do you mean out from the front of the batten or at either end?
A bigger diameter pole (typically for heavier curtains) will protrude further into the room

IMO tracks are a bit of a pain compared to poles.

You can use curtains with header tapes with poles, as long as the pole hoops have a little eye on them that you can hook hooks through, but usually poles are used for tab top or eyelet curtains



When you're buying curtains the dimensions shown on them will be for each curtain. So if it says 48" wide by 72" drop then each curtain is 48" wide.

Murmansk

bery_451 wrote: »

Ok from my understanding I require a pair of curtains for each window and each of the pair must be x1.5 or x2 bigger in width than the window width?

No, each curtain needs to be 1.5 or 2 times bigger than the width of half the window! Basically you have twice as much curtain as window!

jennifernil

We have wooden battens above our windows to attach the curtain track to, curtain poles could also be attached easily to them.

You do need to have them wider than the window so that the track or pole can be wide enough to allow the curtains to be drawn far enough aside to almost clear the window opening, thus not taking too much daylight from the room.

I prefer curtains that have a header tape that can be pulled in to give nice gathers and fit the required width, then hooked into runners or pole rings with the small rings below them as described above.

The ones that just hang directly on the pole are, IMO, very difficult to get to sit neatly in folds.