First Place Specialty Window Fashions (2017)

← Back

Read Project Details

2017 Award-Winning Specialty Window Treatments

The Project

These clients wanted stunning, tasteful, and gracious custom window treatments to update their traditional dining room. They preferred neutral fabrics with texture, allowing the windows to feel beautifully finished while keeping the focus on their valuable art collection.

The goal was to create a custom design that respected the architecture, complemented the room, and added softness and polish without overpowering the space.

The Design Challenge

The dining room featured an unusual bow window configuration that created a significant design and engineering challenge.

The five windows had four different wall angles, and the window widths varied by as much as 12 inches. Above the main windows were five small transom windows, bringing the overall height to almost 11 feet beneath a double tray ceiling.

The room also had existing Silhouette shades in both the lower windows and the transom windows. That meant the finished treatment needed to hide 10 continuous cord loop controls while still looking intentional, elegant, and seamless.

Amy needed to make the windows appear consistent, conceal the controls, create side panels that felt substantial in proportion to the height, soften the hard angles of the window wall, and honor the clients’ request for a neutral, traditional, and refined design.

The Custom Solution

Using Minutes Matter Studio, Amy presented several design options to scale so the clients could visualize the possibilities and choose with confidence.

The final design included three layers of fabric: six side panels, flat valances with curved bottom corners and contrast welting, and contrast fabric fans between the valance sections. The fabric fans helped soften the difficult window wall angles while adding a graceful custom detail.

Buttons were also added to the top of each valance section. During installation, the original buttons felt too discreet for the scale of the treatment, so the design was adjusted by enlarging the button size and adding another button layer — an idea suggested by the clients that made the finished detail even stronger.

Amy’s installer carefully measured, templated, and installed the project, while the workroom fabricated the final panels and hinged top treatment to create a smooth transition around the challenging angles.

The Finished Result

The finished window treatments brought the dining room together with elegance, proportion, and thoughtful detail. The neutral fabrics framed the windows beautifully, softened the architecture, concealed the shade controls, and allowed the clients’ art collection to remain the visual focus of the room.

The result was a refined, gracious, and highly customized specialty window treatment design that solved a complex architectural challenge while honoring the clients’ style.