What is a window treatment?

Search that phrase from an Australian address and you get Wikipedia, an American dictionary and a run of US design magazines — same products, but the advice underneath does not survive the trip. North-facing means the opposite thing here, your quote will use different words, and there is a cord law none of those pages mention.

What the phrase actually means

Strictly, it is anything fitted to a window opening to manage light, privacy, warmth or appearance — defined by the job it does rather than what it is made of, which is why one roller blind and a wall of pinch pleat curtains sit under the same heading.

The word is imported. Here you will hear window furnishings, and window coverings used interchangeably. Nobody here will quote you for a "window treatment" — you will get a quote for curtains, blinds, shutters or awnings, itemised component by component.

• Shades are blinds. A roller shade is a roller blind; a cellular shade is a honeycomb blind.
• Drapes are curtains. The word barely gets used here outside the trade press.
• Blackout is blockout. Same fabric, same job, one letter apart.
• Window furnishings is what your installer will say. It is the trade's own word, and the national peak body is the Window Shading Association of Australia.

The four families, and what each one is for

Everything belongs to one of four families. Get the family right and the fabric choice more or less makes itself.

• Curtains. Fabric on a track or rod, hanging in front of the opening — sheer, blockout or decorative, in S fold, reverse pleat or pinch pleat. They soften a room and absorb echo in a way no hard surface can.
• Blinds. Roller, pleated, venetian, vertical, Roman, honeycomb and panel glide, fitted inside or over the opening. Compact and precise — right wherever a curtain would foul a door or benchtop.
• Shutters. Louvres in a frame — hinged, sliding or fixed. Ours are Thermalite shutters, an advanced polymer rather than timber, which is what makes them sensible in a bathroom.
• Outdoor blinds and awnings. Ziptrak and straight-drop blinds, folding-arm awnings. The only family that deals with heat before it reaches the glass.

That last one matters more than it gets credit for. Radiant heat passes through glass, is absorbed by your floor and furniture, then re-radiated at a wavelength that cannot easily pass back out. A curtain works on heat already in the room; an outdoor blind works on heat that has not arrived — and effective shading blocks up to 90% of it.

Start with the aspect, not the fabric

We will not price a room until we know its dimensions and its aspect, and the aspect is the half people are surprised by. Brisbane sits at 27° south. North-facing glass takes high summer sun, which a modest overhead projection handles. West-facing glass takes low afternoon sun — the one that makes a living room unusable from three o'clock. East is the same geometry at breakfast.

Your Home, the Australian Government's design guide, is direct: for east and west elevations, adjustable vertical shading such as external blinds is the optimum solution. Not a heavier curtain — eaves cannot catch sun at that angle, and nor can anything hanging inside.

Which is why "what colour" is the wrong first question. A west-facing window with the wrong product on it is still a west-facing window with the wrong product on it in every colour we make.

The cord rule that decides a child's room

This is the part no American guide will tell you, and it is not optional. Australia has two mandatory standards for corded internal window coverings — one for supply and labelling (2010), one for how they are installed (2014). The ACCC is plain about why: young children have died in Australian homes from accidents with corded blinds and curtains.

The installation numbers are specific, and worth knowing before anyone quotes you:

1. No loop below 1,600 mm. A loose cord must not form a loop 220 mm or longer anywhere under 1,600 mm from the floor.
2. Cleats go high. A cleat used to wind a cord out of reach cannot sit below that same 1,600 mm.
3. Guides have to hold. A cord guide fitted below 1,600 mm must stay attached under 70 newtons of tension.

Compliance is the floor, not the goal. In a nursery or a child's bedroom, specify cordless or motorised and take the cord out of the conversation. Child-safety standards are part of what our WSAA membership commits us to.

Choosing without over-specifying

Most homes we walk into have over-specified blockout and under-specified sheers — bought for every room because it sounds thorough, and then someone is turning a lamp on at four in the afternoon. Work through it in this order instead:

1. Aspect first. Which way does the glass face, and when is the room actually a problem?
2. Then the job. Sleeping, working, watching a screen, or a view you paid for.
3. Then privacy after dark. No fabric gives you daylight and night-time privacy at once. That is physics, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
4. Fabric and colour last. By this point there are usually two sensible options, not forty.

Layering resolves most of it — a sheer and a blockout on one double track gives you a soft, private room by day and a genuinely dark one at night. And no, rooms need not all match: keep the heading and hardware consistent and the house still reads as one house.

Frequently asked questions