Curtains for non-standard size windows

[Pleasedontdothat]

We’ve just moved into an old farmhouse which is lovely but the previous owners took all the curtains with them, leaving the poles and because it’s an older house none of the windows is a standard size. We’re in the haemorrhaging cash stage of house moving so don’t want to spend a fortune on beautifully made to measure curtains and I can’t sew to save my life … none of the ready-made curtain sizes will fit 😩

Any ideas which don’t involve selling a kidney?

We had a huge window in our first flat and we had no money, I just bought two sets of IKEA curtains for it so it was 4 panels. A faff to pull across but you couldn’t tell with the gathers and the dark fabric. We had a bit more money in our current house and used Blinds2Go for the blinds which we were very impressed with, they also do curtains.

@Pleasedontdothat I can see where you’re coming from re. the curtain lengths. If you don’t want to go floor length because of the radiators, the standard “window ledge” length of 154cm is just a bit too short. You therefore have 3 choices:

1. 180cm length, unaltered, will likely sit somewhere between and floor depending on your house
2. 180cm length, shortened to your desired length - a local alterations shop will still work out cheaper than made to measure
3. 230cm length - likely to be floor length or just above, again depending on your house. Floor length tends to look best in living rooms etc and if your curtains are only shut at night shouldn’t be too much of a hinderance to heat from radiators. Totally personal choice though!

in terms of width, you’re pretty “standard”. Curtain widths are per curtain and therefore you should aim for a width around the size of your window, so that you get 1.5 to 2 times the size of your window in curtain material,, to allow for “gather”. In traditional pencil pleat I’d aim for 2x the with of your window. In eyelet you can get along fine with 1.5x.

180cm and 182cm windows - go for 170cm width or 230cm width if you want them particularly gathered or “full”
140cm to 152cm windows - if you’re going for eyelet style, you’ll be fine with 117cm width, but if going pencil pleat you’ll need to go 170cm for any decent gather.

Feel free to ask more if anything comes to mind!

Thank you 😊

As a fellow old farmhouse owner I strongly urge you to measure in at least 3 places on each window - not only are ours not a standard drop or width, but they are not the same so across the width of one curtain. Also never assume two apparently identical windows (next to each other, in the same room) are the same, they're really not. For made to measure when we got around to it we used www.terrysfabrics.co.uk/

😂 yes we’ve already realised that - everything is ‘unique’!

EBay - there are lots of great old curtains to be had for not much money.
I just got some pretty, huge, fully lined ones for my kitchen.
You can search by size too which makes it easier.