Pinch Pleat vs Pencil Pleat vs S-Fold

The heading is the part of the curtain most people never think about and then live with for fifteen years. It sets how the fabric falls, how much fabric you pay for, how much window you lose when the curtain is open, and — the part nobody mentions in the showroom — what has to be screwed into your ceiling to hold it up.

Pinch pleat: the tailored one

A pinch pleat is made by gathering the fabric into small groups at the top and stitching them permanently in place. Two folds to a group is a double pinch; three is a triple pinch. The stitching is the whole point — the pleat can't relax, so the curtain keeps the same rhythm of folds whether it was hung last week or nine years ago.

That structure costs fabric. A double pinch typically runs around 2 to 2.3 times the track width in fabric, a triple pinch closer to 2.5 to 3 times. Fabric is usually the largest line on a curtain quote, so the heading you choose moves the number more than the colour does.

Pinch pleat is also the only one of the three that is genuinely comfortable on a decorative rod, hung from rings, as well as on a track. If you have bought a beautiful rod and want it seen, this is your heading. A triple pinch on a fine sheer, though, is a lot of ceremony for a fabric you can see through.

Pencil pleat: the off-the-shelf one

A pencil pleat is a tape sewn across the top of the curtain with cords running through it. You pull the cords, the fabric gathers into narrow upright folds, and you tie the cords off. Nothing is stitched, which is what makes it flexible: the same curtain can be gathered tighter or looser, and it will hang off a rod or a track without complaint.

It's the heading almost every ready-made curtain uses, and the cheapest way to dress a window. Fullness lands between 1.5 and 2.5 times the width depending on how hard you pull.

The trade-off is that the folds are gathered rather than formed, so they're never quite even and they soften over time. It's a relaxed, traditional look rather than a designed one — which is the right answer for a spare room and the wrong one for the window everybody sees. Our own made-to-measure range is S-fold, pinch pleat and reverse pleat; if you want pencil pleat, off-the-shelf is genuinely where it makes sense.

S-fold, S-wave, ripplefold: one heading, three names

These are the same thing. If a supplier says S-fold and a designer says wave and a website says ripplefold, nobody is describing a different curtain — the industry never agreed on a word. It's the heading people ask for by pointing at a photograph.

An S-fold gets its shape from the track, not from the sewing. Carriers are fixed at even spacing — commonly 80mm or 100mm — and a snap tape at the top of the curtain clips into them, so the fabric has no choice but to fall in a continuous, even S. Fullness sits around 2 to 2.5 times the width, set by that carrier spacing rather than by anyone's judgement.

Two consequences worth knowing. It looks identical from both sides, which matters for a street-facing window where the neighbours see the back of your curtains. And because the wave is regular and unstitched, it's the kindest heading to sheer curtains — the fabric is doing the one thing it's good at, which is falling. That's why most of the S-fold enquiries we take are for sheers, often as the front layer over sheer and blockout curtains on a double track.

The three headings at a glance

There is also reverse pleat, which almost nobody writes about: the pleat folds to the back instead of the front, leaving a flat, uninterrupted face across the top. It's a quieter pinch pleat, and it suits a plain blockout curtain where the fabric should read as one clean plane.

How much window you lose when it's open

This is the question that should decide the heading on any wide opening, and the one most guides skip. An open curtain doesn't disappear. It bunches at the end of the track, and that bunch is called the stackback. As a working figure, allow 20–30% of the track width for stackback across both ends on a medium-weight fabric. On a 3-metre sliding door that's roughly 600–900mm of glass sitting behind fabric — on the view you paid for.

Three things move that number:

• Fabric weight. Lined and interlined fabrics stack wider than sheers.
• Fullness. A triple pinch is the worst offender; pencil pleat at 1.5× the tightest.
• The pleat itself. A stitched pleat carries a permanent bunch that an S-fold's snap tape doesn't, so S-fold stacks tighter at equal fullness.

The fix isn't the heading, though — it's the track. Run the track 250–400mm past each side of the opening so the curtain parks on the wall instead of the glass. That only works if there's wall there to park on, which is exactly the sort of thing worth finding out before the fabric is cut, not after. Shading works best when it clears the glass completely, and the same geometry that helps in summer helps your view all year.

Your heading picks your track — and the track has to hold

Choosing S-fold is choosing a track. There's no version that hangs from a rod, because the wave is created by the carriers; put an S-fold curtain on rings and you have an expensive pencil pleat. Pinch and pencil pleat go on either, so if a decorative rod is part of the look, that's your short list.

Then the boring part, which is the part that fails. A full-height curtain in a lined fabric across a 3-metre opening is heavy, and all of that weight hangs off a strip of aluminium fixed to your ceiling. Plasterboard on its own will not hold it. It might hold it for a year. A track needs to be fixed into ceiling joists, or into a timber batten installed above the plasterboard before the ceiling was sheeted — and if neither exists, that has to be solved at measure, not on installation day.

Worth checking at the same time: whether your track will be cord-drawn, wand-drawn or motorised. Corded window coverings in a child's room are a genuine hazard and are covered by a mandatory Australian safety standard, so specify cordless where children sleep. And since windows are the weakest thermal point in most Australian homes, a heading that holds a deep, even fold does slightly more thermal work than one hanging flat — a small effect, but a free one.

Frequently asked questions