Clueless about Curtains

[inadreamworld]

In our last place DH and I bought made to measure curtains. They were lovely but pricey. New house and two children later we need to save money.

Can anyone tell me how to measure our windows and choose ready made curtains? Any shop suggestions - we live in North London. The thought of putting up curtain poles sends me into a panic attack! Might be able to ask builder to put them up perhaps....

Advice really really needed as we have NO CURTAINS at the moment (they were manky so builder ripped them out when he did up the place for us). So random people walking down the street can see in our windows.....lucky we are not doing anything particularly scandalous!!

HELP!

Tesco do curtains online... Not sure they are cheaper than other online places though but I think they are still doing curtains for xmas... IKEA for cheap tab top ones maybe ?

£17 - £21 for curtains in primarni! They're lined too! Not very thickly lined but ideal for our house, no streetlights, middle of nowhere living

Dunelm Mill have a fantastic selection of curtains at really reasonable prices if you have one nearby.

John Lewis always has the answer IMO. You can watch a video about measuring:

www.johnlewis.com/buying-guides/curtains-buying-guide?stop_mobi=yes

You need to know the length of the pole and where you would like the curtains to finish to work out width and drop. You will either need to double or multiply by 1.5 the width of your pole to work out the width you should buy.

The multiplier depends on the style of curtain.

These are local to me (suffolk) and really helpful! I go into the showroom but they told us about these guides they do on their website

www.jim-lawrence.co.uk/Default.aspx?page=37&cat=6PRODUCTINFO

they will also help over the 'phone & I googled to find a youtube video they said about too (of theirs)

Sorry forgot to come back and say thank you everyone! Pasta the John Lewis measuring link is very helpful. DH won't let me go to Primarni as he says I will get some old tablecloth-like thing which will be worse than the....er tablecloths we are using as curtains now!

There are so many places you can buy ready made curtains from and tbh there isn't much of a difference.

Putting a curtain pole up is v v easy, it's just four screws!