Privacy curtains

Most guides answer the fabric question and stop. Fabric is the easy half. A curtain is cloth hung in front of a hole, and the gap at the top, the gaps at each end and the join down the middle are all still there when the fabric is perfect. Here is the order we check it in on a measure.

Privacy runs whichever way the light does

The brighter side is the side that gets seen. In daylight the outside is brighter than your room, so a translucent curtain scatters the light coming in and the person on the footpath gets a wash of fabric instead of your living room. You can still see out reasonably well, because you are looking from the dark side toward the bright one.

At dusk that flips. Your lamps come on, the room becomes the brighter side, and the same curtain that hid you all afternoon turns into a lit screen with your silhouette on it. No weave density fixes this, because the problem is not the weave — it is which side the light is on. Privacy blinds run into exactly the same two problems and split the same way, which is why the honest answer on both is usually two layers rather than one clever fabric.

So there are two questions, not one: what you want by day, and what you want after dark. Most people answer the first and get surprised by the second around seven in the evening.

Spend on the fabric, not on the fullness

Fullness is the ratio of flat fabric to finished track width, and it is the number most guides reach for when they talk about privacy. Ours are fixed and we will put them on the quote. A wave fold runs 2.3 : 1. Box pleat, reverse pleat, gathered and knife pleat all run 1.8 : 1. On a 3 metre track that is 6.9 metres of fabric in wave fold against 5.4 metres at 1.8 : 1.

More fabric across the opening does cut transmission — roughly 2.3 layers of cloth in the light path instead of 1.8. Real, and smaller than it sounds, because the extra is not spread evenly. It doubles at the crest of each fold and pulls thin in the trough, so a full sheer reads denser while still carrying vertical lines you can see straight through. Change the fabric and transmission changes across the whole curtain. Add fullness and it changes in stripes.

That extra 1.5 metres is a drape decision. It buys deeper, more even folds and a curtain that hangs like a curtain rather than a bedsheet, and we will sell it to you gladly on those grounds. It is not the lever to pull if the problem is your neighbour.

Pick the fabric by what it has to do after dark

Sorted by what actually holds up, rather than by what photographs well:

• Lined blockout. The only thing on this list that gives you privacy with the lights on, and the only one that works at any hour. Blockout curtains are the bedroom default for that reason, not the sleep argument.
• Dense semi-sheer, or light filtering. Tight enough that daylight arrives as glow rather than image. Good all day, useless at night. This is what most people mean by a privacy curtain.
• Metallised curtain fabric. Verosol SilverScreen comes as a curtain cloth, not only a blind. The aluminium layer on the back reflects solar radiation rather than absorbing it, which makes it a different material to dyed polyester. We will not quote you a reflectance figure — those numbers are Verosol's, not ours to verify.
• Open-weave voile or net, alone. Pretty, and the weakest thing here. Fine as the front half of a pair. As the only layer on a street-facing window it is decoration with a privacy story attached.

Lining is the standard upgrade and does two jobs — an opaque layer, plus sun protection for the face fabric, which is no small thing on this coast. What we do not make is interlining, the third layer between face and lining that overseas sites mean by double thickness. Where one curtain is not enough our answer is a second curtain, not a fatter one, and a sheer and a blockout on a double track is better anyway because you choose which layer is closed.

Overlap the centre and take the track to the wall

This is where a good fabric gets undone. A curtain measured to the window is measured to the wrong thing: the opening is the glass, plus the frame, plus however far a sightline reaches past it. Four places give you away, and none care what the cloth cost.

1. The centre join. Two curtains meeting edge to edge leave a vertical line at eye height, which is the whole problem in one. The fix is an overlap, one leading edge crossing past the other by a hand's width. That takes runners: panels threaded onto a single pole share one rail, so their edges can only meet, never pass. Every track we supply runs on runners — no poles, no eyelets. Want the look of a pole? A decorative track gives you that and keeps the overlap.
2. The ends. Run the track past the frame both sides and return it to the wall, so the curtain finishes against plaster rather than mid-air. The return also kills the gap a flat-hanging curtain leaves for a sightline to slip down behind.
3. The top. A ceiling-fixed track closes most of it, a pelmet the rest — the same detail the government's passive design guidance credits with trapping still air at the glass. One fitting, two problems.
4. The floor. Sill-length curtains leave a gap you can see under from outside on a sloping block. Go full length, close enough to the floor to look deliberate.

Specify it room by room, not house-wide

Street-facing living areas. The pair, on a double track. The sheer handles daylight and stays closed most of the time; the blockout comes across when the lamps go on. It is the most common thing we fit, for the boring reason that it is the only arrangement answering both questions.

Bedrooms. Blockout, lined, full length, wall to wall. Privacy and darkness want the same thing here, so there is no trade-off to manage.

Ground-floor rooms and home offices. A dense semi-sheer usually does, because these rooms are rarely lit and looked into at once. If guests sleep there, treat it as a bedroom.

Bathrooms. Not curtains. Fabric and moisture is a bad pairing and no lining fixes it — a wet room wants a shutter. We would rather say so now than replace a mouldy curtain in three years. It is the one room where we will talk you out of the product this page is about.

If you would rather not take our word for it, the Window Shading Association of Australia publishes the standards its members work to. We are members. The family started this in 1978, so there are 48 years and more than 10,000 installations behind the paragraphs above.

Frequently asked questions