From the mailbox, this reader has a question about choosing a window treatment: Choosing drapes, is it better to pick a fabric color that matches the color of the walls, or should the drapes contrast with the walls so the window will stand out?   And of course, as in so many decorating decisions, the answer is… it depends! How many windows do you have to dress, and what size and shape are they? This will determine the overall visual impact of the window treatment just as much as the fabric you use. Full-length drapes with a swagged valance over top will have a much greater “weight” in your color scheme than a simple cafe curtain, obviously. So – will you use side panels, a simple valance, a panel curtain inset within the window frame (a nice tailored look we’re seeing more of these days), or layers of lush drapery, or simple full-drop curtains? What kind of mood do you want to create in your room? Cosy country chic or crisp and modern; eclectic or formally elegant?

Choice of fabric and color will depend on the overall theme. A rich burgundy brocade side-swagged drape over an antique lace privacy panel will read like a Victorian parlor, even if you choose to contrast the window treatment with a neutral creme color on the walls – but a whole different mood is evoked in the same room if you swap out the opulence for a simple tab drape in natural woven hemp fabric. So you see – “it depends”! One important clue is in your question, actually — if drapery or other window treatments are in a color that contrasts with the wall color, it will make the window (and the drapery) stand out as a feature of the room. As a general rule, contrasting color blocks will draw attention to the place where the two colors meet. If you’ve got a drop-dead view out that window, or a large room that needs a focal point and a more intimate feel, that may be the best choice. One smooth sweep of a single color, on the other hand, will tend to unify a space.

If you’ve got several small windows that break up a wall, particularly in a fairly small room that can tend to feel cluttered, matching the drapes to the wall color might be the better choice. Matching colors would certainly be my first choice for rooms where you have some amazing art or furnishings that should be allowed to be the center of attention. But that doesn’t mean you need to go all matchy-poo like a department store showroom!Weight Loss Munich Germany If your wall color and the drapery color are not exactly the same color, but are kept in the same tonal range — dark, medium, light? Interval Walking Program To Lose Weight— it can serve the same unifying purpose without looking too precisely matched. 6 Ton Central Ac Unit

Try a subtle pattern on a background close to your wall paint color, for example. Another way to go is with the same color for both drapes and walls, but play up a textured drapery (coarse-woven linen, tone-on-tone brocade, etc.) against the smooth wall surface. The difference in the way the light hits these different surfaces can give a window treatment plenty of visual interest, without “cutting up” the space. Look at the effect of different window treatments against different wall colors, to get a feel for what suits your style and how this matching/contrasting color rule works. For myself, I find it particularly useful to browse the window treatment sections of online shops, and the catalogues of drapery suppliers. Photographs can let you view a color combination in isolation — so much less distracting than trying to judge these things in a crowded store, with a host of other drapery fabrics competing for attention! Hope this helps you make your decorating decision, Chris.  

Let me know whether you decide to match or contrast with your curtains and wall colors!If you live in a poorly insulated home, and many of us do, you could spend thousands this winter on energy bills. But our ancestors had many ways to keep snug at little or no cost. Now, thanks to modern infrared cameras and advances in environmental physics, we can understand how these methods work and measure how effective they are. The key to understanding how to keep warm is the fact you lose more heat by radiation to your surroundings than you do by convection to the air. This is why your house feels so cold when you get back from a winter break, even after you’ve turned on the central heating; though the air quickly warms up, the walls take far longer to do so and may continue to make you shiver for up to a day. What to do about those warm windows? Roland Ennos, Author provided In the same way, in poorly insulated houses the inside of the external walls can be several degrees colder than the air and the internal walls, making you feel chilly.

Fortunately, there are five simple ways to overcome this and minimise your energy bills. Close Your Curtains At Night During the day, your windows let in more radiant energy than gets out; sunlight can enter through the glass, but the window is opaque to the infrared radiation trying to escape. At night, however, single-glazed windows can get extremely cold – in my Victorian house which we try and keep at a room temperature of 20°C, an infrared camera showed internal window temperatures of as low as 7°C on a frosty night. From inside, you can see the difference a curtain makes. Even double-glazed windows aren’t great insulators and can fall to around 14°C. This results in energy losses of 50-100 watts per square metre, equivalent to running an old-fashioned light bulb. The best way to prevent this heat loss is to close your curtains and lower your blinds immediately after dusk. They provide an extra barrier to radiant heat loss, add insulation and reduce draughts.

My cheap blinds raise the internal surface temperature to 16°C and thick curtains raise it virtually to room temperature, minimising heat loss and making the room feel cosier. Solid brick or stone walls are better insulators than glass, but they still get cold and let out lots of heat. In my house the external walls fell to 16-17°C, 3-4°C cooler than the air in the room, even though they were made of 50cm thick sandstone. A framed picture hung on an external wall is around 1.5°C warmer than the bare wall. Fortunately you can significantly reduce energy losses by covering them with picture or mirrors. Even a simple poster adds an extra layer of insulting air, raising internal surface temperatures by around 1°C and cutting lost energy by a quarter. Framed pictures or mirrors are better, if more expensive. Not being a Russian oligarch or a medieval baron I don’t have any carpets or tapestries to hang on my walls, but these would be even more effective. Who needs Kindle when you have warm books?

Best of all are bookshelves. My partner is an avid collector and her old books make superb insulators. The spines of the volumes in our book-lined study are raised almost to room temperature, making it snug and warm. Thermally at least, printed books are far superior to their electronic counterparts. Doors can let in draughts, and being thin and sometimes glazed can be very poor insulators, falling to 10-15°C on cold nights. Covering your door and the surrounding wall with a thick lined door curtain can eliminate pretty much all the heat loss. Even if you can’t reduce all the heat loss from your outer walls you can still shield yourself from the cold. Our ancestors used to draw up wooden screens behind themselves and huddle up to the fire. Being at room temperature, the screens kept their backs warm, while radiation from the fire heated up their front. You could do the same, and you could even protect your face from the damaging effects of a roaring fire by using miniature fire screens, just like Georgian ladies.

Position Your Furniture In The Warm How warm you feel in a room depends on where you are, even though air temperature is the same throughout. You will feel warmer if you position yourself closer to the inside of the house because the cold external walls are further away. So try and place your furniture next to an internal wall. If your desk is up against an external wall so you can look out of the window your legs will tend to get cold, though you can reduce this effect by leaning a cardboard sheet against the wall. If the head of your bed is next to a cold external wall you will be prone to getting a stiff neck, though you can counter this somewhat by using a solid headboard. The best solution, of course, is a four-poster bed, but most bedrooms just aren’t big enough. So knowing something about how heat moves can help you brave the cold winter. My experience has also shown that investigating the thermal properties of your house with an infrared camera will keep your kids amused for hours.