Many people own small cottages on a lake in addition to their primary home. I had already completely a 2 story window treatment in their primary residence and they loved it so much they wanted me to do their ‘Lake ‘ home windows as well. I was so excited to be able to work on a completely different style of window treatment compared to the previous heavy, luxurious look. When the client met me out at the Lake House I was in love… It was cute, well constructed, and had great bones! The stone on the fireplace was actual stone from the property which really set the focal point up for the whole downstairs.

The client really felt like the windows needed something but she just couldn’t put her ideas together on what it was. She didn’t want it to feel too serious, or take away from the fireplace. She thought she wanted some type of sheer but wasn’t even crazy about “sheer fabrics” . She also had some great accents in color in the room which made everything not so bland and she thought she wanted some kind of color in the valances but not to take away from anything. Her main request was that she did not want the valances to block the view at all!! She wanted all the light she could get. She really didn’t want fish net either because she felt it was too heavy looking in there.

WF11_3652I kicked around some ideas on sheers and took several “textured” sheer books to the appointment. I came across this sheer fabric which looked like netting. It had texture, body and it was light and airy. After looking around a little I started drawing up my ideas. The complicated part was that the series of windows around the room varied between banks of 3 windows together and single windows. The client didn’t want a lot of busyness and she didn’t want it monotonous either….that was the challenge. So I decided to treat the single windows differently than the banks of 3 windows. I designed it with the same shape and design on each window with a little shift midstream so it broke up the design. The banks of 3 windows had single scoops across and cones at each post and single rows of cording. The single windows had double scoops per window with 2 strands of cording per window. Since it was all out of the same fabric and cording, it all flowed together but just wasn’t so redundant! The posts I chose were bronze which matched her lighting and other accents in the room. They were screwed directly into her existing woodwork and the fabric tabs at the top of each cone were put around each screw and the top of the fabric was placed right behind the post. The post was then screwed almost all the ways into the trim which left a projection of around ½” .The softness that these valances provided for the room was really stunning.

To photograph this room so you could actually see the window treatments was tricky! We had to wait until dusk to get the right amount of light to actually see the details of the treatment. That is how soft and open the rooms actually feels.

I know this is a quite simple look and design but so many people don’t know what to do with a lot of windows in a room and they don’t want to block out the light. Most people just end up doing nothing and miss an opportunity to add that bit of style that is necessary to complete the space.