Window Treatment Solutions for Arched Windows
Arched windows are beautiful, but they are the bane of interior designers as they are difficult to treat properly and often come with other constraints like the slope of the ceiling or the wall placement. Learn about window treatment solutions for arched windows in this House & Home video:
In an ideal world, you can dress up an arched window with a long rod and sheer or solid drapery on either side that you can pull across for privacy.
If you don’t need blackout coverage and have a high wall, you can run your curtain rod across the base of the arch (bottom of the semicircle) and then do drapery pulling across. Only do this if the rod is well above head height, otherwise it will look funny and awkward with a curtain rod below the top of the room.
Most problems with arched windows happen because the arched window is put into a point in the architecture where the roof comes to a peak on the exterior, which means on the inside you have a sloped ceiling. What happens is that there isn’t enough space at the height necessary to hang a curtain rod, so the rod ends up looking really pinched and tight instead of decorative and expansive. In this situation:
- You can do a lower hung curtain rod, provided you have the necessary height so it doesn’t look cramped, and then the arch would be exposed.
- Mount hardware around the arch. Using two drapery panels, attach them so that they come across the top of the window and cross over each other and then down either side. When you’re ready to draw them across, you just unhook them, and they cover the full window. This method is a little decorative and feminine, so you may want to limit it to nurseries and very softly finished bedrooms.
- Have a Roman blind custom made that covers the upper arch (the downside is that you’re always covering the arch on the interior), and then the Roman blind operates up and down from that point. This solution tends to be quite elegant, tailored and fitted, and you can add some nice details. You could also have a rattan Roman on the inside, put a curtain rod across the bottom of the arch, and hang a nice sheer which gives you a soft, layered, casual look.
