Why I Sometimes Tell Clients to Wait Before Installing Curtains
Not something a curtain business would normally say. But sometimes it is genuinely the right advice.
Window furnishings look simple from the outside. In practice, there are a lot of moving parts. And timing matters more than most people realise.
Over the years, some of our best outcomes have come from slowing the process down. Some of our trickiest situations came from moving too quickly. Here is what I have learnt.
When I recommend waiting
There are four situations where I will usually suggest holding off, even when a client is keen to get started.
The painting is not finished. Fabric sits against your wall every single day. A sheer that looks perfect on a sample card can read completely differently once the walls are painted. Get the colour confirmed first.
The furniture has not arrived. Curtains do not exist in isolation. The sofa, the rug, the timber tones — all of it affects how a fabric feels in the space. If a key piece is still on its way, we are making decisions based on an incomplete picture.
Trades are still on site. New builds and renovations almost always have work continuing after handover. Dust, paint touch-ups, flooring. Installing new fabric into an active site is an easy problem to avoid.
The brief is still vague. If someone is not fully settled on what they want, I would rather have an honest conversation than push forward. Spending significant money on something you are not sure about rarely ends well for anyone.
What the industry data actually shows
There is a reason curtains are making a comeback after years of roller blinds dominating Melbourne homes, and it is not just about aesthetics.
For a long time, people pulled down their old curtains and replaced them with roller blinds. It felt modern, clean, minimal. But over time, two things became clear. First, roller blinds are simply not as effective at managing heat as curtains. Second, rooms with only roller blinds can start to feel austere and cold, both literally and in terms of how they feel to live in.
Cellular blinds, sometimes called honeycell blinds, tell a similar story. They have been enormously popular in the United States and Europe for decades precisely because the science backs them up. The honeycomb structure traps a layer of air between the fabric cells, acting as a genuine thermal buffer between the cold glass and the warm room. We have seen a significant uptick in honeycell installations over the past 12 to 18 months, and the driver is almost always the same: people are paying more attention to their energy bills and starting to ask what their windows are actually doing for them.
Worth knowing: A quality cellular blind paired with a sheer curtain will outperform a standard roller blind on insulation by a significant margin. Most people do not realise this when they are making their initial choice.
The technical side people do not always see
There are also practical reasons to wait, particularly on more complex projects. Modern homes with full-height glazing and open-plan layouts look incredible but raise questions that are not always obvious upfront:
Where does the curtain stack back to when open?
Is there enough wall space on either side of the window?
Does the window still need to open freely?
How do you achieve privacy at night without losing the view during the day?
And the details are interconnected. A heavier fabric improves insulation but changes stack size, track requirements, and motor specifications if you are motorising. A recessed pelmet or hidden track looks beautiful but needs to be planned during the build, not retrofitted afterward. Changing one detail tends to affect several others, and this is exactly the type of thing that is far easier to get right when the home is properly finished and we can see everything in context.
Getting it right matters more than getting it done
After a build or renovation, there is real pressure to feel finished. Curtains are often last on the list and the temptation is to just get them sorted.
But these are things you live with every single day. They affect light, privacy, warmth, acoustics, and the overall feeling of a room. Done properly, they will be on your windows for fifteen or twenty years. A decision made carefully at the right time will always outlast one that was rushed to keep pace with a timeline.
It does not mean waiting forever. It just means making the decision with the right information, in a home that has properly settled into place.
If you are not sure whether now is the right moment, call us. That is genuinely what the free consultation is for. We will give you an honest answer either way, no pressure to sign anything on the day.
David Nuttall
Evans Curtains and Blinds
