Bright & Breezy Curtains

Corey and I have been going back and forth for months on what we wanted to do for curtains in our dining room. Our first plan was to get some bright yellow, geometric-patterned curtains to contrast a bit with the floral curtains in the living room. Here’s a quick reminder of what our living room curtains look like:

However, when we grabbed a swatch of the fabric we were thinking about and held it up against the wall, it looked a bit crazy next to the floral curtains – out living room curtains pack a lot of punch, and if you put anything with color or pattern next to them, it all gets a bit overwhelming.

So, our original idea was officially scrapped. We still have plans to bring in more color and pattern to the dining room with upholstered chairs at the ends of the table, and some sort of rug in the long run, so after mulling it over for a while we finally decided that our curtains should probably stay pretty neutral.

On a quick trip to Ikea the other day, we just so happened to find exactly what we needed – for only fifteen bucks a window! They’re the Matilda curtains, and they’re basically the exact opposite of what we originally planned to use – they’re white, sheer(ish) and the only pattern on them is a very subtle white-on-white stripe.

(Via Ikea)

One interesting fact about Ikea curtains that we didn’t know was that they all come in an 8-foot length, and they come with iron-on hem tape for you to adjust to the length you need. It was incredibly easy to use the hemming tape (and the directions are much clearer than most Ikea directions are!) so it only took an extra 20 minutes or so to get them all hemmed to the correct length.

We used the same conduit-curtain-rod method that we used when hanging the living room curtains (you can read all about it here if you want to learn the how-to!) and pretty soon we had a much brighter, more airy dining room!

Both of us were pretty surprised by how much of an impact the curtains actually make on the room as a whole. It feels brighter, lighter, and the ceiling feels much taller (thanks to our “hang ‘em high and wide” method). We are more than pleased!

You might notice that I’m a little…zoomed in on all of these shots. That’s because we have made a few other changes in the dining room that I’m not quite ready to reveal yet, so for now all you can see are these close-ups of the windows themselves. But, of course, you’ll see plenty of whole-room photos in the next couple of weeks!