What Are Sheer Curtains?
Sheer curtains are made from lightweight sheer fabrics, often with an open-weave structure that gently filters natural light. Sheer curtains are not lined and therefore soften daylight as it enters a room while still providing a reassuring level of privacy during the daytime. They are particularly well suited to bathrooms and bedrooms, where privacy is important but maintaining a sense of light and openness matters too. Hung on a café rod in line with a glazing bar, sheer curtains can be positioned to shield the lower part of a window from the street while preserving uninterrupted views of trees and sky above.
Sheer Curtains for Bifold Doors and Large Windows
Many contemporary UK homes and extensions are designed around wide expanses of glazing, particularly large bifold or sliding doors. While these create a wonderful indoor–outdoor flow in summer, during the darker winter months the blackness beyond the glass can feel stark and exposed. Full-length sheer curtains for bifold doors are an elegant way to soften this effect, diffusing light if needed by day and screening the blackness during the darker hours.
Why Choose Extra-Wide Sheer Fabric?
For very wide windows and doors, extra-wide sheer fabric is often the most practical and visually satisfying solution. Usually around 280cm wide, extra-wide voiles and sheers — particularly plains or those with a ‘railroaded’ stripe — can be railroaded, meaning the width of the fabric becomes the drop of the curtain. This technique allows you to create sheer curtains of almost unlimited width with no vertical joins, which is especially important as seams can be noticeable in lightweight sheer fabrics.
Weighted Selvedges and the Perfect Drape
For a particularly neat finish some of our Extra Wide Sheer fabrics incorporate a hem weight woven into one selvedge. These fabrics are very much designed to be ‘railroaded’ so that the weighted edge ensures that the curtain hangs perfectly.
Choosing Timeless Colours for Sheer Curtains
The Tinsmiths sheer fabric range focuses on ivory, white and natural-toned sheers. While there are many strongly coloured sheer fabrics available, our emphasis is always on materials that will remain current and look beautiful for years to come.
It is also worth considering the practical nature of sheer curtains. Unlike lined curtains, sheers are unprotected from direct sunlight, and strong colours can be more susceptible to visible fading over time. We feel it can be disappointing to invest in sheer curtains only to see noticeable colour change after a single summer in place.
Soft neutrals — ivory, chalk, linen and natural tones — not only diffuse light beautifully, but also age more gracefully, making them a reliable choice for long-term interiors.
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