Upgrading your window treatments is one of the best ways of easily improving the interior appeal of your home. Windows are always important property characteristics to buyers and the size, condition and age of your windows will factor greatly into the final sales price of your home. However, even the best windows can be ruined if the window dressings are ugly, old, dysfunctional or overly taste-specific. While window dressings have a bad reputation as being prohibitively costly, they can actually be changed out for an incredibly small investment.
This dialog will teach you how to elevate the aesthetics of your windows for maximum effect.
What are Window Treatments?
Window dressings are the aesthetic materials and accessories used to decorate the window frame and simultaneously provide privacy and light control for the interior of the home. Treatments come in an incredible variety of styles and there is no right or wrong style for any given home or window. However, some styles are outdated, while others may not appeal to all tastes and sensibilities.
Therefore, home staging the windows in your home should always reflect the effective staging strategies of depersonalizing and neutralizing style-specific décor.
Purchasing Window Accessories
Going to a professional decorator or custom manufacturer will cost a fortune. This is fine for home owners who are decorating their home for enjoyment, but is not appropriate for most home staging uses. When staging, it is advised to keep costs to a minimum, in order to preserve the profit margin enacted by the overall design.
I recommend looking for window dressings in places not normally associated with high style, such as WalMart and other discount retailers. You can find excellent bargains on hardware and fabric in many such stores at a fraction of the cost of buying custom items or even purchasing from name brand retailers. No matter what the style, I can typically dress windows for $10 to $25 each, including hardware, and still create a professional and incredible aesthetics.
Window Treatment Tutorial
Here are some of my rules for home staging the window dressings in your home:
Maximize light flow by keeping treatments simple and away from the actual glass part of the window. Instead, install the treatments outside the window frame on the wall to make windows appear larger.
Install treatments floor-to-ceiling whenever possible, in order to create the illusion of larger windows and a higher ceiling.
Remove vertical blinds and old fashioned venetian blinds. Plastic mini-blinds should go right in the garbage can.
Expensive options, like customized shades can be nice, but also pricey. Instead, I recommend simple panel curtains hung high from decorative hardware. This solution is easy to do and very budget-friendly.
