Since our bedroom is on the front of our house, with a door that goes right to the front yard and two windows that look out to the side yard and our neighbor’s house, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to privacy. Obviously, we need privacy in a bedroom. But I always run into the same problem when it comes to areas that need to be private. I love natural light, and I hate blocking out natural light. So how do you have privacy without blocking out natural light.
In the rest of our house — the “non-private” areas — I never close the window shades. Our windows in our living room stay open 24/7. I figure maybe I’m preventing burglary that way. A would-be burglar can look in our windows, see that there’s nothing in there worth stealing, and move on. 🤣 But also, it’s just a hassle to open and close the window shades, so I leave them open all the time.
But obviously, a bedroom needs privacy. So I’ve spent weeks contemplating what I would do on our windows and the door in our bedroom. All three will have velvet curtains, which is pretty thick fabric. Plus, they’ll be lined with white lining so that they’ll be white from the outside. I know I’ve shown this a thousand times lately, but just as a reminder, this is the overall look that I’m going for…
In some rooms of our house (living room, breakfast room) we have lined, top-down/bottom-up shades. Since our breakfast room has been our temporary bedroom during while I’m working on our bedroom suite, those shades have been pretty amazing. I like to have the sun shine through the windows as the sun comes up in the morning, so having that top-down function is perfect. It allows the sunlight to stream into the room early in the morning while also giving us plenty of privacy with the lined portion remaining closed on the bottom.
That’s the same shade that I have on the window in my walk-in closet, and I pretty much always keep it in the top-down position so that I can have natural light and privacy. The only time I open it from the bottom up is when I’m in there doing laundry.
But in other rooms (my studio, pantry, master bathroom, and bedroom), I have these shades (affiliate link). I love these shades so much. They’re a lot cheaper than the lined, top-down/bottom-up shades since they only open in one direction and they’re not lined. They do offer quite a bit of privacy, but sunlight also comes through them in the morning, so I know they don’t offer 100% privacy.
And while I used to have those on all three windows in the bedroom, now I only have them on the two windows and the door is fully see-through, offering no privacy at all. (Excuse the older photo. I don’t have updated photos yet.)
Anyway, I don’t want to put a shade on the door. I’m just not a “shade on the door” kind of person. But I also don’t want to put privacy film on the door because I really like being able to see out of that door when I want to. I may opt for privacy film in the future, but for now, I want to see if we can go without.
So I’ve been thinking about my options, and here’s what I finally decided. I’m going to use a layered approach so that I have options depending on how much light we want in the room at any given time. Here’s what I mean.
I’m going to keep the shades on the side windows. And then I’m going to reuse the sheer curtains that I used in here when the room was a home gym.
I loved those curtains so much. They do let light stream in, but they’re not quite like sheers. They’re thicker than sheer curtains while also kind of having that flowy, breezy, somewhat sheer look to them. When I took everything out of the home gym, they were too nice to get rid of, so I kept them, hoping I could find another use for them. And I just happen to have the right number of panels.
So I bought double curtain rods for the windows and the door. I can’t even remember the last time I used double rods (if ever), or the last time I did a layered look with curtains (if ever), so this is new ground for me.
It took me a while to find exactly what I wanted, but I finally decided on this curtain rod (affiliate link). I really liked the brackets, and I especially liked that the rods aren’t adjustable.
This curtain rod is very similar to the one I have in the studio. And while I like the one in the studio much better, it didn’t come in a double rod. But this is a close second.
Like I said, it’s not an adjustable rod, which I really like. Instead, on the longer rods (like this 8-foot one I got for the door), the pieces screw together in the middle.
So for the door, the velvet curtain panels will be 1 1/2 widths of fabric each, so that will be plenty for me to actually close the curtains at night for privacy.
And then on the windows, I think the combination of the shades plus the sheer curtains will be enough for privacy while still allowing some sunlight to come through in the morning. This room is the brightest room in the house in the early morning, so I’m really hoping this will work out.
We’ll see how it works out, but I’m excited about the idea of reusing those sheer curtains again. I also like the idea of bringing some white up to the upper portions of the walls so that it’s not too teal-heavy on the upper walls. I think that little bit of white sheer curtains showing will bring some much needed lightness up on the walls to break up all of that teal. So hopefully it works out the way I’m envisioning in my head.
I still didn’t get all of the trim done on Tuesday. UGH!!! I’m stuck in a never-ending loop of working on trim day after day after day. But I’m so close to being finished. I just keep reminding myself of that end goal to keep me focused. And I’m not only focused on the end goal, but on short term goals as well. As soon as all of the trim is painted, that means that all of the dusty and dirty projects are done. And as soon as that’s done, I plan to reward myself by bringing in the area rug and bedside tables. I don’t want to bring in too much because I still have to hang the grasscloth wallpaper, but if I can just see a couple of items in place, that will keep me motivated. So I’m keeping my eye on both that short-term goal, as well as that final reward of a beautiful, finished bedroom.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
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