From Home Measure to Installation: How a Made-to-Measure Curtain and Blind Order Works

People delay enquiring about custom curtains for a reason that has nothing to do with the curtains. They are not sure what they are committing to. Is someone going to arrive and sell to them? Do they need to have decided everything first? How long will their windows be bare?

The process is more ordinary than it sounds. Here is what each stage actually involves and what is worth doing on your side to make it go smoothly.

Why anyone measures at your house

Because windows are not the size they appear to be. Very few openings in a real home are perfectly square, floors are rarely dead level, and the difference between the width at the top of a window and the width at the bottom is frequently enough to matter on a fitted blind. Measure a recess in three places and you will often get three different answers.

There is also everything that is not the window: burglar bars, an air conditioner above the frame, a wall that is not solid where a bracket needs to go, a light switch exactly where a curtain track wants to end, a floor that slopes towards a patio door. None of this is visible in a photograph.

Curtain Master visits clients at home to measure each window before supplying a quote. In practical terms that means the measurement risk sits with the person taking it, which is the main reason a custom order behaves differently from ordering to your own numbers.

Before the visit

You do not need to have decided everything. You do need enough information for the conversation to be useful.

• Know what each room is for. A bedroom that needs to be dark in the morning and a lounge that needs privacy at night are different briefs, and the brief drives the product.
• Have a rough budget range in mind. Not to disclose necessarily, but because it changes which fabrics are worth looking at, and it saves everyone time.
• Clear access to the windows. A bed pushed against a window or a wardrobe in a bay makes measuring slower and less accurate.
• Note what is staying. Existing tracks, rods or pelmets you want to keep, and any flooring, wallpaper or painting still to be done.
• Gather your references. Photographs of what you like are more useful than descriptions, and a piece of an existing fabric or a paint sample helps with matching.

What happens during the measure

Expect widths and drops for every window, recess depths, and notes on obstructions and the wall construction where brackets will go. Expect questions rather than a pitch: what the room is used for, which way the window faces, whether the curtain needs to clear a radiator or a door, whether anyone in the house needs a room properly dark.

This is the point to raise the things you might otherwise mention too late. Children in the house and cord safety. A window you can never reach. A door you want to keep fully usable. A wall you are planning to repaint. Awkward constraints are much cheaper to solve now than after manufacture.

It is also the moment to make the decisions that fix the fabric quantity: heading style, finished length, lining or no lining, track or rod. Those four choices drive the price more than the fabric name does.

The quote

A useful quote is itemised rather than a single figure. You want to be able to see, per window, what the product is, what the fabric is, what the hardware is and what the installation covers. That matters for two reasons. It lets you adjust one room without re-quoting the whole house, and it lets you compare like with like if you are getting more than one quote.

Curtain Master provides obligation-free quotes, which means the measuring visit does not commit you to ordering. If a quote comes back higher than you expected, the productive question is not “can you reduce it” but “which choice is driving this”. Usually it is fabric quantity, and fabric quantity is driven by heading fullness, pattern repeat and finished length, all of which can be revisited.

Manufacture

Once you approve, the fabric is ordered or drawn from stock and the curtains are cut, joined, lined and finished, or the blinds are made to the recorded sizes. Lead times vary with the product, the fabric and whether anything has to be brought in, so ask for a timeframe when you approve rather than assuming one. If a date matters to you, say so at that point rather than later.

For upholstery and custom furniture the client also produces furniture renderings, so a design can be seen before it is made. If you are ordering a headboard or a recovered piece alongside curtains, that is worth asking about, because it is much easier to change your mind at rendering stage.

Installation day

Preparation on your side is simple. Clear the area in front of each window, move fragile items out of the room, and make sure someone who can make decisions is present. Drilling into masonry generates dust, so covering nearby furniture is sensible.

Before the team leaves, do three things. Open and close every curtain and operate every blind yourself, so you know it runs properly and so you can feel anything that catches. Look at each window from inside the room in daylight, checking that drops are even and that light gaps are what you expected. And ask how each product should be cleaned, because the answer differs between a lined curtain, a fabric roller blind and a timber shutter.

Anything that is not right is easiest to raise while the installer is still there.

If you are doing more than windows

Sequence matters when several trades are involved. As a general order of works, flooring and wall finishes come before window treatments, because both generate dust and both can change the finished floor level, which changes a curtain drop. Wallpaper goes on before a track is mounted over it. Painting is finished before brackets go into the wall.

Curtain Master supplies curtains, blinds, shutters, headboards, wallpaper, upholstery, wooden flooring and wall cladding, and supplies and installs across Durban, greater KZN and the Eastern Cape, so a multi-room project can be sequenced as one conversation rather than several.

Starting the process

If you want to begin, you can request a quote online, or visit one of the showrooms in Morningside, Springfield or Port Shepstone to look at fabrics before booking a measure. Details for each branch are on the contact page.