Long window decoration

DEAR GAIL: Our living room window is 12 feet long by 4 feet tall and is centered on a wall that is 20 feet long. Any suggestions for how I can decorate so the awkward size and shape is not so noticeable. FRANCES S.

DEAR FRANCES: That is a long window on your wall. One of the things that you’ll want to stay away from in a treatment is anything that goes straight across with no vertical breaks. For example a straight cornice box or a valance that is gathered at the top on a continental rod. Now you can use a top treatment, but you need to make sure that it has some elements that create a visual vertical break. An example would be using bands on a shaped cornice box. I say a shaped cornice box as you also want to steer away from anything that will have a straight line at the bottom emphasizing the length of the window. You didn’t mention the style of your home, but one treatment that would be nice across the top would be swags and cascades. The swags create both the vertical break as well as the horizontal movement along the bottom. Swags and cascades are typically thought of for more traditional settings, but depending upon your fabric choice they can go with a casual contemporary dcor.

To help with both the length and width of the window, you can also consider doing stationary panels. Use four panels on an iron, wood or brass rod and mount them higher up on the wall right below the ceiling. Yes, this will create open wall space between the top of the window frame and the ceiling, but it is something that we do all the time to give a window height. Depending upon how high your ceiling is, you can place an architecture element in the open space over the center window that you’ve created. There are some great decorative iron pieces or wood appliqus that you can purchase in town, through a mail order catalog or the wonderful worldwide web. Another fun idea for this area is to have a wall saying made. Again, there are all kinds of web sites out there that will print any saying that you can just rub on. If you want more color you can also have muralist paint a design. Since it is a fairly small area it will be reasonable in price. Make the center area your focal point, which will draw your eye away from the length of the window.

For the panels, you can keep them simple stationary panels, which means that they will just hang straight from the rod and not open and close. Keep them at one width of fabric so you don’t close in the window and eliminate your light. On the sides, bring the panels out on the wall so that they just come into the window by about three inches. Instead of dressing up the top of the panels, I would rather see you do something different to the bottoms. Reason being the top then may get too busy with the four panels and the open wall space. The panels can puddle on the floor, you can use a different fabric or even add just a couple pleats. It all depends if they can be seen. But I would bring the panels down to the floor since what we are trying to accomplish is to make the window visually longer since it is only four feet high.

Hope this helps Frances and I’d love to see a picture when you’re done.