If you are searching for window treatments in Cincinnati, you can find standard shades and basic blinds almost anywhere. But what if you need something that goes beyond the basic styles offered by big box stores and online retailers? Few teams also design, measure, fabricate, and install custom draperies, along with all the layers that go into finishing a window properly, especially in a complicated configuration.
One of our clients in Indian Hill ran into exactly that.
She’d wanted something for her two-story great room for years and never found anyone who could pull it off. The room has arched windows stacked across two stories, a wall of glass facing south, and a television she wanted to watch without fighting a glare. That’s usually how these projects start. It’s less “I want new curtains” and more “I have a specific problem, and I don’t know who solves it.”
Why Custom Comes Down to the Details
For the tall living room windows here, we specified a velvet from Carole called Warm Up in Stone, blackout lined to cut the afternoon glare and keep the room usable for a movie in broad daylight. We used Paris Texas hardware, and the automated panels run on Somfy motorization. Each drop measures just over twenty-one feet, since the windows run the full two stories. None of that comes off a shelf. It was specified just for this room, to solve the problems particular to this space.
What the Install Actually Took
Measuring a two-story wall of arched windows accurately takes more than a tape measure and a guess, since a half-inch mistake at the top of a twenty-one-foot drop turns into a much bigger problem by the time it reaches the floor.
Getting drapery panels for tall windows into place isn’t a one-person job. Once we locked in the measurements, we brought in scaffolding to reach the upper windows safely and put a full crew on site for the install, working from the crown molding down to the last pleat.
One installer on a ladder can’t finish large windows in a room like this alone.
Why Motorization Wasn’t Optional Here
At twenty-one feet, nobody is pulling those panels open and shut by hand every day, and the top of that window wall sits two stories up, well past anything a homeowner could reach without a ladder.
Somfy motorization wasn’t a luxury add-on here. It was the only way our client could actually use the room the way they wanted, opening it to flood the space with natural light on a sunny afternoon, then closing it at the touch of a button before the family sits down to watch something.
Why Custom Draperies Last Longer
Manufacturers build ready-made curtains and big-box blinds for average windows, not a two-story wall of arched glass. A cheaper blackout lining fades and stops blocking light within a few years. Custom curtains in Cincinnati need to hold up under direct southern exposure for a long time.
The hardware matters as much as the fabric. A track built for a lightweight cotton panel isn’t built to carry the weight of two-story, lined velvet panels opening and closing on a motor day after day. Paris Texas hardware, installed correctly, is made to handle a heavy load and daily use without sagging or binding the way a big-box track would.
One Home, Many Phases
This great room forms one phase of a larger project in this house. We’ve also fitted a ground-floor bedroom with floor-to-ceiling pleated drapery, wrapped around several angled walls, and motorized just like the great room, and more rooms are planned. Working through a whole house this way, phase by phase, tends to happen once a homeowner sees what’s possible in one room done well.
Why Homeowners Choose Apollo Draperies
Experience matters here, and so does knowing who’s actually managing a job that needs motorization, scaffolding, and a dedicated team, not just an installer with a ladder. Apollo Draperies has been doing this for Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky homeowners for more than 50 years, and a good share of our work comes to us in the form of referrals from past clients and the Cincinnati interior designers we’ve worked alongside.
If you have a room like this one, or something else you’ve wanted to fix for years and haven’t found the right team for, schedule a window treatment consultation with Apollo today. We’ll come stand in the room with you, look at where the sun hits and how the windows actually run, and talk through what you’re trying to do in that space, then build a plan around it.
See more fabric, style and design options on our custom draperies and curtains in Cincinnati page.
