This is something I wish I knew about a long time ago! Here’s how to get new curtains to hang straight! Such a great trick.
We were on a shoot for a designer recently and she taught me this little trick, which I thought was brilliant. When you get new curtains – the kind that come folded up in a package – they’re often creased in such a way that they just won’t hang straight, even after you fuss with them a whole bunch. Especially with heavier weight curtains, either the liner or the curtains themselves are sometimes a fabric that doesn’t respond well to a lot of ironing. We definitely have a little spot on our living room curtains where I melted the liner trying to get them to hang properly. These curtains are about seven years old now, so definitely not new, and I’m actually itching to replace them, but I thought I’d use them to demonstrate this trick anyway. So here’s how to get new curtains to hang straight!
Tools Needed For This Project
- Lovely new curtains of your choosing (Half Price Drapes on Amazon have great reviews and I’m currently stalking several different pairs trying to decide which I like best. Please don’t buy them all before I get a chance! 🙂 )
- All your necessary hardware (curtain rods, ring clips if using, etc.)
- Masking tape or painter’s tape
- Optional: Handheld steamer
Getting New Curtains to Hang Straight
Start out by hanging your curtains as planned. Stand back and observe how terrible they look. Steam them a bit to try to get them as acceptable-looking as possible and stare in frustration at how they look better, but still not quite right. You know that’s exactly how it goes! 🙂
The problem is that not only do you need to remove the creases from the packaging, you also need to train the fabric to fall just right, not all willy-nilly. And that’s where the “tape on the curtain” trick comes into play.
Fold your curtain, accordion-style, so that the fabric is making kind of a zig-zag pattern. Then squish the accordion of fabric in really tight. Kind of like folding it up, but while it’s still hanging.
Wrap the accordion curtains in tape at the top, middle, and bottom of the curtains so that they’re held in that shape very tightly.
Leave them like that for 24-48 hours.
Un-tape them and stand back in amazement at how your curtains now look absolutely perfect.
This will work even better if your curtains are exactly the right height. If you have a little bit of puddling action at the bottom, it really depends on what fabric you’re working with. It may look absolutely beautiful, but some fabrics just aren’t meant to puddle and may cause your curtains to look really nice at the top, but still imperfect at the bottoms. In this case, hem your curtains and try again!
Have you ever tried a trick similar to this? I loved seeing how well this worked for the designer who taught me this trick, but I can’t wait to try it on my own new curtains, soon hopefully!
MORE IDEAS LIKE THIS
- The Curtains in the Dryer Trick
- DIY Giant Charcuterie Board
- DIY Living Room Built-In Shelves and Fireplace
- The Creek Line House Decorating Idea Archives
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.