Living Room Drapes

I’m currently reviewing swatches and making plans to–at long last–make the drapes for our living room.  Yes, the same living room.  It’s still not done.  Here we are on the average day:

Which I don’t mind so much–except you can basically see straight into the house from the street.  Add that some windows in bedrooms face the street and those have curtains, and the variation in appearance from the road really bugs me each and every time I pull into the driveway.

I’ve been pondering what to do for these windows since we moved in.  Leave them bare was option #1, but ruled out for the reasons above.  Wood blinds was option #2, but I’m rejecting that based on the shape of the windows–they’re too shallow to allow an inside mount, and I wanted to avoid the outside mount since I love the overall look of the room as it is.

Most wood blinds require 1.5″-2″ of depth to make room for the hardware, and ours are about 3/4″, so that’s a no-go.  Option #3 is drapes, which is where we are now.  I’ve selected some  finials and rods in a dark wood that complements the wall unit on the other side of the room, and looks lovely with the wood of our coffee table and side tables:

So now I have to find the perfect curtain fabric and sew up some panels.  Well, OK, it’s a little more complicated than that.

First, I don’t know if I want to do two panels on either side of each window, or one panel on the far side of each window and “frame” the bare wall in the middle:

We’re shopping for a large, horizontal piece of art to put on this wall–it’s nine feet long and the space over the sofa would do better filled.  We’ve got the mirror there as a placeholder, but I’m not really feeling it in the long term.  So I’m asking myself, do I want to use the curtains on either side of the art, or do I want to frame the windows with curtains on each side and then float the art in the middle?

Some mock ups:

 

What can I say?  I’m an artist with the Photoshop.  But you get the idea here.

Of course, one of the main considerations is the color of the sofa.  This brown…I do not love.  The couch is totally getting recovered.  As in every other room in the house, I’m working in ONE Whipstitch-yellow element here, and the sofa is IT.  A statement sofa, as it were.  I think I’ve found the perfect fabric for it, right here at a local interior dec fabric shop–I can’t locate it online but it’s a near-solid woven geometric dotty-thing and I love it.  Let’s do a little mock-up with that, too:

So I’m asking: do I do two curtains, or four?  Is it more modern and in keeping with the vibe of the room and the house to “frame” that wall, or should I go the slightly more traditional look and do two curtains on each window?  I’m more than willing to spend the money and time on more curtains, but only if the final LOOK is right–otherwise, why bother?  Feel free to weigh in, y’all–hubs and I are super, super ready to have these windows covered!

Again, the options are one curtain:

Or two:

Sofa color is (probably) not up for debate.

P.S.  If it makes any difference, I’ll do the same curtains/drapes in the dining room, which is immediately next to the living room and accessed through a double-wide doorway with no door, so the window in the dining room is visible from the living room.  Because there’s only one window in the dining room, there will for sure be two curtains on that one window, regardless of what I decide to do in the living room.  Just FYI.

P.P.S.  Oh, and they don’t have to be white.  Oops.  Guess I could have said that.  We’re leaning pretty heavily toward a textured white/just-barely-cream in these two rooms, but I also have my eye on a silver metallic dupioni (yum! but a lotta look) and a couple prints (including this, this and this, any of which would be kinda cool with the round re-covered chair on the other side of the room)–we can check those out when the swatches get here.  For the time being, let’s work on how MANY and then we can talk about what KIND.