Window Treatments in the New Year: What You Need to Know
The day your new custom window treatments are installed you will experience feelings of joy and awe! Beautiful fabrics and trims will frame your windows, provide light control and complete your room. A fresh new look for your home can bring you many years of enjoyment.
Just like everything else in your home, window treatments get a bit dusty, faded and dreary over time. Life happens, they get spilled on, they aren't cleaned as regularly as they should be and they lose their luster. Fabrics can fade and become damaged by the sun.
The new year is a great time to freshen up your window treatments. These basic 5 steps will have them restored to their former glory so that you will once again love them!
1. Remove Carefully
Depending on the type of window treatment you have you may be able to take them down yourself or you may need to call a professional installer to remove them. Valances mounted on boards and attached with simple L brackets can be easily unscrewed from the wall. Drapery panels attached to rings or a rod with pins are also easy to remove. Treatments such as swags and roman shades may prove more challenging and may need an installer to take them down. If in doubt, err on the side of hiring someone who knows how to safely uninstall them.
2. Clean Strategically
Most drapery fabrics are not meant to be washed and dried in a residential machine. Be sure that before you throw your treatments in a washer that you are certain they are made with fabrics and linings that are washable. The best way to clean window coverings is to lightly vacuum or dust them. If there are spots or stains on them, take them to a dry cleaner that has cleaned drapery previously.
3. Dry Attentively
While you have the drapery down, you may want to lightly press them. Be very careful when putting an iron on the face fabric. Heat can discolor and shrink some fabrics. It would be best to iron it on a flat surface on the lining side with the face away from the direct heat of the iron.
4. Hang Beautifully
Now that you are ready to re-hang your treatments you want to install them the same way you removed them. Whether that is on your own or with an installer. Part of what an installer does is to "dress" the treatments. Meaning that he/she will take the time to smooth out all the wrinkles and make sure that they are perfectly adjusted.
5. Call Confidently
If you just don't feel you are up to doing this refresh yourself, there is no shame in calling a window treatment workroom or professional installer for assistance with any part of this process. They will be able to help you figure out the best next steps and may have other options than what I have listed here. And if you get "stuck" in the middle of the process they will have solutions to help you get the job done.
A through cleaning and/or re-hanging of your window treatments will liven up your space and restore the window's former beauty. Just in time to enjoy them for the rest of the year!
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Until next time,
Amanda