I’ve been searching for curtains for our living room for almost 2 years now! The main issue I’ve been facing is that the accent chairs that are right in front of the windows have a very distinct, busy, & colorful pattern. To tide us over until I found ones I liked I put up these natural/ivory ones from Target. I know – they are blah boring but honestly they were like $20 per panel so it was a cheap solution for the time. They are way too plain for what I want but I was tired of the ugly brown curtains left up from the previous home owner. You’ll notice the current curtain rods have this fun wavy “S” pattern to them – that is due to our dear Sadie (dog lying down in the picture) pulling on the old curtains and deforming them. I like to think it’s a stylistic choice 🙂

I really wanted something with a pattern but I knew it had to be a larger print than the zig zags / different enough not to be competing with the chairs. I ended up finding these last week – new release from west elm and the colors are perfect for the room / match the chairs perfectly! I’m obsessed with the textiles from West Elm – their rugs, pillows, curtains and home accents are all super cute.

Here are some of my other fave sites for curtains:

Ballard Designs
Crate & Barrel
West Elm
Etsy
Wayfair

The next decision was which length to buy – the ceilings in the house are all 8 feet but in the living room they are a few inches higher – the room used to be the garage / was converted back in the 70s. The curtains that are up in the first picture are 84″ and you can see the curtain rod is way to low / too near the window frame / doesn’t look good. This is a simple do/don’t on curtain rod placement for your reference. I knew I would have to get 96″ and hope that I could put the rod all the way near the top of the ceiling / not need to hem the curtains at all. I like my curtains barely touching the ground but not dragging. I usually like to use curtain clips but since the curtains were already going to be on the long side I knew I would hang using the tabs instead.

The 2nd project to go along with the new curtains is a new curtain rod. The ones up in the room right now are 1. an ugly brass gold color which doesn’t go with the rest of the room decor and 2. bent by our lovely dog Sadie when she was going through her separation anxiety woes / attacking the windows. I made curtain rods out of conduit for our dining room before so I knew I wanted to do the same thing here. I wouldn’t be able to find one continuous rod that would go across both windows and if I did it would be more money than I was willing to pay. This project is super cheap and easy and ends up looking like a store-bought curtain rod!

Here is the final rod + new curtains – now I just need to decide on a paint color for the room….