Dining Room Curtains… What to do?

We’ve owned this house 1 year and 8 months and yet still have no dining room window treatments of any kind. It’s a tragedy of sorts. The blinding morning sunrise comes through the wall of windows in this room making it difficult to use in the morning hours. These same windows are also very close to our neighbor’s house, which means they see into the house every time they use their driveway. We also need to help the energy efficiency of this old house by adding some window coverings.

So, it’s high time we begin to do something about this issue. There are a few things that are “necessities” to me: Light Control, Privacy, and Beauty.

Keeping these 3 items in mind, here are 5 different window treatment options I’ve been considering:

1. Café’ Curtains on lower half of windows only

I like this option because it gives me a mostly-private room, but still allows for the pretty window grids to be seen and some light to come into room at all times. The negative is that they aren’t as energy efficient and may come across a little to “country” for my style.

2. Café’ Curtains on lower half of windows + white wood blinds

I couldn’t really find any examples of this combo, but I’m sure you can picture it…

This would give me full privacy control, light control, and yet still add some pretty-factor through whatever fabric I choose. Still not sure if it will look too casual or country though.

3. White wood blinds + Full curtain panels

This is probably my favorite option in terms of combing the function of the blinds plus some beauty on the side. However, the positioning of our windows on the walls makes it a really tight squeeze to get curtain rods hung without slamming them into the walls next to them – especially where the far right window meets the corner curio cabinet (see first photo above).

4. Curtain panels only on sides of window

This is the most common and simple option. And probably the cheapest. But again, it’d be hard to fit the rods in and get full curtain coverage on the wall that has the 3 windows side-by-side.

5. Full Curtain panels + Sheers

I’d use a double rod to accomplish this so that the sheers would hang “behind” the curtain panels.

This would allow filtered light to come through the sheers when the curtain panels are pulled back, and have the option to close the curtain panels for total privacy. It’s probably the prettiest but priciest option of the 5.

Given that I’ve thought about these possibilities for 1 year and 8 months, I’m ready to finally make a decision. I’ll let you know that I’m going to use one of the combo options (#2, #3, or #5) and have already gotten started on implementation. More info to come.

Just out of curiosity, which option above would you choose?

Note: Click on the pictures above to be redirected to the original source.