Curtains for floor-to-ceiling windows: sheer, blackout, or both?

Floor-to-ceiling glass is the best thing about a Dubai apartment and the hardest thing to dress. Get it wrong and you either lose the view or lose your sleep. Here's how we approach it on every project.

Start with what the room is for

A living room needs light control and privacy in the evening. A bedroom needs darkness. A home office needs glare control in the afternoon. The answer is almost always two layers, but the weight of each layer changes by room.

Layer one: the sheer

A white or off-white sheer softens the harsh midday light, gives daytime privacy from the tower opposite, and keeps the view. Choose a fabric with some body — a very thin voile looks cheap and creases. Wave-fold headings on a ceiling track give the cleanest look with tall glass because the fabric falls in even columns.

Layer two: the lined curtain

In bedrooms, this is a blackout lining behind a decorative face fabric. In living rooms, a standard lining is enough and hangs more softly. We usually pick a colour a shade or two off the wall — linen, sand, stone — so the curtain reads as architecture rather than décor.

The mistakes we fix most often

• Curtains that stop short of the floor. They should kiss the floor, or break by a centimetre. Anything shorter looks unfinished.
• Tracks mounted inside the window recess. Mount them on the ceiling, wall to wall, so the curtains stack off the glass when open.
• Not enough fullness. You need roughly twice the track width in fabric. Flat curtains look like bedsheets.
• Grey blackout fabric. It turns the room cold. Use a warm-toned blackout or a lining behind a warm face fabric.

Budget

Made-to-measure sheers plus lined curtains for a typical one-bedroom apartment (living room and bedroom) usually land between AED 4,000 and 8,000 installed, depending on fabric. It's the single upgrade that changes a room most for the money.