Picture this: You decide not to hire a designer with the idea of saving some money. “It’s just drapes,” you think. How hard could it be?

You’re pretty good with colors and art, so you order draperies that go nicely in the room and a box cornice to finish the look and cover the drapery hardware.

Everything seems perfect until you go to install it and the drapery hardware doesn’t fit under the cornice! Now what?

Now you have to reorder the cornice, an expensive mistake. What else could go wrong? Lots of things. The rod might not work with the ceiling. The rod may be cut at the wrong angle for a bay window. A door may no longer open once the drapery is installed.

Designing and installing custom drapery is as much about engineering as it is about art. Interior Designers and Professional Installers do a lot of calculation and use special measuring tools to make sure your job is right the first time. It’s more technical work than most people realize and interior design professionals use more geometry and algebra than the average person likes to think about.

“A million things can go wrong,” explains our designer, Theresa, “but it usually doesn’t because a professional knows how to make sure they order exactly the parts and sizes they need.”

How does it work? Once the window treatment design is complete and the customer has approved it, the designer and installer gather the information they need to engineer the system. They come to the home and spend time measuring every part of the window and surrounding area. They make drawings and schematics and may make phone calls to the manufacturer that result in adjustments. It’s a team effort that continues until they are certain every piece of your window treatment will work properly with every other piece.

Professional measuring is a big enough reason by itself to hire professionals for your custom drapes because you avoid the expense of mistakes. The rod alone can cost more than $500!

What’s the moral of this story? Even if you’re an engineer, it’s ultimately less expensive to hire professionals to design and install your custom drapes. Contact us today and less us do the math!