Need extra long curtains? Need extra wide curtains? Here's my IKEA hack!
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I'm not kidding when I say that I've been looking for living room curtains for our bay windows for 4 MONTHS. Now if you’re looking for approx 300cm drop curtains that are ready made and won’t cost you the earth like I was, then I’ll save you some reading time, check out the great value pencil pleat Umi Curtains.
If you’re curious about how I hacked some similar IKEA curtains for my own benefit, keep reading!
Our extra long / wide curtain bay window requirements
In our living room we have a curved bay window, it’s a large one too, at about 3.5m wide. We can't have a regular curtain pole as it's not a straight wall, we can't have shutters because they'd have to drill into the plastic frames of the windows to install them and no we can't get an "angled bay window pole" either because it's rounded wall not angled.
I got SO frustrated with it. When we moved in luckily there was a curtain track (like this one I’ve found) put in place for these unsightly pink curtains which we had to live with for ages, so really, pencil pleat curtains on a track was my only option.
Here's what the whole room looked like before...
THE LIVING ROOM BEFORE the curtain hack
The curved bay was the least of my problems. Almost all ready-made and off the shelf curtains (i.e the most affordable route) only came down to a standard 229cm in length. If I wanted full length curtains – which I did, as I felt like they would lengthen the shortness of the window – I needed at least 240cm length.
So after a painstaking 5 hours looking online for ready-made extra long curtains I came up with nothing.
I thought my only options were to get a bespoke made to measure curtain company to do it all for me but when I revisited the quotes I got for that, I was like "hell NO". It was upwards of £700 for that, with the most basic fabric.
300cm drop IKEA curtains
I did a little bit of research online and was reminded that IKEA curtains are all really long at 300cm drop. The problem is however that they're often narrow.
So I set to work! I picked some ready made Ikea 3m drop curtains and hatched a plan.
I had to buy two sets of IKEA 300 cm curtains, so our window actually has 4 curtains, 2 each side.
I really liked the material and price of these but obviously they were eyelet headers and I needed pencil pleat for our track.
So I hacked off the eyelets section at the top, resulting in the right length I needed for the living room windows with seam allowance, bought some of IKEA's classic curtain header tape (which I rave about as they allow both a curtain pole and track to go through them) and whizzed it all through the sewing machine.
Hey presto. A fine looking set of curtains - for under £100!
OUR LIVING ROOM AFTER
Bonus hack - Extra Wide Curtains
With my rather basic sewing experience, I decided that making a pair of extra wide curtains was probably going to end up making the curtains hang a little bit oddly. But it’s good to know that there is a possibility of making one pair of extra wide curtains just by stitching the four parts together.
Honestly though, we really don’t notice the fact that they are two pairs of curtains - they end up looking like one pair of extra-wide curtains whether drawn or drawn back as there’s enough fabric.
Conclusion
If you're stressing about your windows like I was, remember how cheap it will be just to settle for a simple IKEA style that can be tweaked with a sewing machine, I bought this Brother LS14 a while ago and it is great value. If you don’t fancy the project you could call a local dressmaker and she'll probably do it for you for pennies.
Long live IKEA curtains!
Shop The Look
Unfortunately the curtains I used are not stocked any more but these are close alternatives:
Ikea Curtains - Grey (300cm drop)
Umi Curtains - Grey (289cm drop)
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