As many of you know, I am in the process of updating my apartment living room design! If you missed it, you can check out the latest update on our new furniture! Even though we are living in a rental home, we are slowly updating the things that we can take with us when we move next. Here is the latest update for our moody apartment living room design!
One of the things that I dislike the most about our rental home are the vertical blinds throughout the house. Nothing screams outdated and halfway functional like vertical blinds. I say halfway functional because half the time they break and fall off or they don’t close fully leaving weird gaps to see through at night. I personally hate them with a vengeance.
So, the next update of our apartment living room design is… NEW CURTAINS! And not just any curtains, custom curtains! Also, not just any customized curtains, but curtains that are very affordable and high quality! Intrigued yet? Let’s jump into these curtains that give Pottery Barn, West Elm, Crate & Barrel and all the other retail stores a run for their money!
Apartment Living Room Design – Curtains
The Company
When looking for affordable window treatment options for our design clients at work, we started looking everywhere trying to find options that were good quality but didn’t blow our smaller budgets out of the water. Window treatments truly tie a room together, just like a rug, but are also a very expensive design element which most people choose to cut first from their design.
We found the company Two Pages and began talking with them about their products. While we found their website, we discovered that you can order their products on Amazon, including the customizable options! Since we are updating our apartment living room design on a tight budget, this seemed to be the perfect choice.
When looking to order for my own house, I knew I wanted to replace our vertical blinds on our back door. However, our sliding door is 60” wide and many ready-made panels are not big enough to cover that width without looking too small or having to double up. I looked into Two Pages and the customizable curtains came out to be CHEAPER than ready mades that wouldn’t even fit.
The Curtains
When choosing a color for my curtains, I really struggled. I knew I wanted a moody look and tried to have fun with our design. One thing that was hard to overlook was the paint color on our walls. I didn’t choose the color of our walls. Even though I want to paint every single wall in our house, I don’t want to invest that much into this home since we are renting it. Since we are only here for a limited amount of time, it doesn’t seem worth the investment financially for someone else’s benefit.
I decided to go with a white linen fabric. This choice compliments both of the bold colors of our sofa and sideboard. It also helped not draw attention to the off white/yellow paint color of our walls. While you can definitely tell that our walls are not a true white now, I feel like it was the right decision to tie together our moody apartment living room design.
What I Ordered Exactly
If you are wondering what I ordered exactly to get our custom sizing and designer look, I will break all of that down.
I ordered the Tia Linen Blend curtains in white. I added a classic pleat detail and lined them with 60%-80% privacy. This allows for privacy but doesn’t stop light from filtering in. I ordered two 50” wide and 90” long panels.
If you read my guide on how to measure for window treatments, you will realize I did something different. In normal design projects, we will multiply the width of the panels by 2 to have a fuller and deeper presence of the window treatments. I only multiplied it by 1.5.
I did this for 2 reasons. Since this is not our permanent home, ordering custom was already a gamble for where we will live next and if they will work well. Second, was cost. It saved almost $30 a panel. While these curtains are an incredible deal, we were still working with a small budget. So, while I recommend multiplying it by 2, sometimes you can get away with a little bit less!
The Curtains Quality
I will say, for these being available on Amazon and never having ordered from this company before, I was very nervous about the actual product. Ordering custom usually means no returns so it is always a little risky placing that first order with a company.
I added the lowest privacy settings to our order to have a sense of privacy from the neighbors behind us. The lowest setting adds privacy at night without compromising the light filtered in during the day. I highly recommend it. In my opinion, it adds to the quality in so many ways. They are thicker and feel more upscale without taking away our light in the mornings.
The quality of the fabric is very high in my opinion. With my job, I work with a lot of fabrics and have chosen custom window treatment fabrics for high end homes. So, to say that about my Amazon curtains, I am very surprised!
I am so happy with the color and the way that they hold its shape. The fabric has a small amount of texture to it which adds to the presence in our living room. They were a little wrinkled when they arrived from being packed so I steamed them after they were hung and I haven’t had an issue since.
Overall, the craftsmanship is very good. Aside from their customer service being pretty bad, whoever made the curtains themselves, did a wonderful job. The pleats are done very well and they look professionally made.
Curtain Hardware
To tie everything together, the last thing needed for curtains is the hardware! I got my window treatment hardware from Amazon. When you are on a budget and want something of decent quality, I highly recommend it. While for design clients, I would choose something nicer with a stronger presence, these amazon curtain accessories are a great back up for a more affordable option.
For the rod, I got the Umbra Cappa 1” rod in black. I typically like to do a 1.25” rod because they look more to scale with a fuller curtain but these don’t come in a rod thicker than 1”. The reason I chose this rod is because of the style. The modern, transitional style of the end cap matched the look of our apartment living room design very well. There are so many options for more traditional styles or if you are looking for something with a little more detail.
For the rings, I went with a 30 pack of 1.25” drapery curtain rings. You always want the rings to be just slightly bigger than the rod but not too big. This will allow for a smooth transition when you open and close your curtains.
My One Complaint…
The only downside to this company is that their customer service is horrible. My fabric was out of stock when I placed my order and I was originally told it would be back in stock in 10 days. After a month of waiting, I called for an update and the man on the other end of the phone was one of the rudest customer service agents I have ever spoken to.
His complete lack of care for finding the answers for me and just doing his job astounded me. I deal with customer service agents on a daily basis checking in on client’s orders so I’m used to this. However, when you are originally told it will only be an additional 2 week wait and end up waiting 2 months, having someone not help you figure out what’s going on but also be rude to you blew my mind.
However, aside from that, the company was very prompt at getting my order completed. Once the fabric was finally back in stock, I had my custom order on my doorstep within a week!
In Closing,
Overall, I am so thrilled with how these curtains turned out! Since I ordered custom sizing, it took a little bit longer to arrive than normal. I can’t recommend the quality enough. For this price point, you will not find a custom curtain anywhere close to this. Anytime someone comes over and feels the final product, they are always shocked! Our apartment living room design is truly coming together!! If you are looking for nice quality curtains or custom curtains while keeping on a budget, definitely try out Two Pages!