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Window Treatments

Dress up your windows with these various kinds of window treaments. Find ideas for café curtains, pleated drapes, roller shades, and more

Sunset
1 /11 Photo: Tria Giovan

Shades and drapes

Shades make for a fresh-looking companion to drapes. Roman shades offer a second layer of color or pattern. With any drapes, hanging the rod higher than the top of the window makes for longer drapery, creating additional height in the room.

2 /11 Photo: Tria Giovan

Café curtains

This room's most striking feature is the window treatments, which run along three walls and extend all the way to the floor. Hung from a continuous iron rail, the sunny, yellow-checked drapery is an inventive cross between café curtains and wainscoting. Not only does it make for a unique look, but the horizontality of this treatment balances out the height of the room.

3 /11 Photo: Tria Giovan

Loose roman shades

A loose roman shade makes these French doors feel more window-like and adds another note of softness to the cozily upholstered room.

4 /11 Photo: Muffy Kibbey

Café blinds

Café curtains aren't the only way to leave the upper reaches of windows open; blinds—such as these in bamboo—can also be hung lower in the frame. This works best with blinds that have a plain upper edge rather than a flap or valence built in.

5 /11 Photo: Tria Giovan

Roller shades

Roman shades come in a variety of styles and can be fashioned from any fabric to complement any room. Here basic roman shades help maintain the sleek lines of a chic, modern bedroom.

6 /11 Photo: Tria Giovan

Patterned sheers

Floor-to-ceiling sheers, patterned with chenille dots, filter the sunlight ; the light, in turn, makes an art piece of the drapes.

7 /11 Photo: Jeff McNamara

Billowing curtains

The dining room's focal point is not the chandelier, as is often the case, but the window treatment. Ivory over a charcoal stripe, with a charcoal ribbon dividing the two, the curtains are so heavily gathered that they resemble a billowing gown.

8 /11 Photo: Tria Giovan

Bamboo blinds

Bamboo blinds are paired perfectly with a palm print in marine blue in this boy's room. Bamboo blinds provide texture to any room and allow for the greatest control of light and privacy.

9 /11 Photo: Jean Allsopp

Casual café curtains

Café curtains are a good solution where full-length curtains are either impossible or impractical, or where the upper part of the window—and the view—are especially appealing. This extra-short version consists of a single panel of fabric, with the rod threaded through a series of grommets.

10 /11 Photo: Tria Giovan

Valence and café curtains

This little girl's room is decorated the way little girls like to dress—in a riot of colors and patterns. The polka dot valence has a beaded fringe detail, and the café curtains feature pinks, greens, and yellows in a fun floral print.

11 /11 Photo: Antoine Bootz

Ruffled valence

Classic window-length curtains, with a ruffled valance, are perfectly suited to this sunny laundry room. The combination makes the room feel as if it's straight out of the 1950s.