Minimalist Window Treatment Ideas for Interior Design
Minimalist interior design is a quite popular style for many homeowners and for rental properties as well. It isn’t about having fewer items as the name implies, but rather having only items that serve a purpose and are functional in your spaces.
Whether you are decorating a new home or just changing up your style a bit, you can start with your items in each room and then add your window treatments or you can do it in the reverse order. Minimalist designs are easy to create in every room of your home by sticking to the characteristics of the decor style.
Why Should You Go for A Minimalist Look?
The minimalist appearance is one of great order and clean lines. It’s also a preferred decor for open floor plan homes without walls to separate distinct areas. It works best when your great room consists of a dining area, a kitchen area and a living room, which are all one large room without walls dividing the spaces. Of course, your bedrooms and bathrooms will be separated by walls, but you can choose the minimalist decor style so that they match the seamlessness of the entire home.
What Exactly Is a Minimalist Style?
In short, the minimalist style excludes any items that don’t have a specific function in a room. It’s not bare by any means though but the lack of knick knacks and many pieces of wall art, such as photo galleries will make your spaces appear much larger than they actually are. The interior colors are most often hues of white, black and gray or even some shades of blue, but each area usually has only two of these basic colors and all the items have strict geometric shapes. Modern minimalism includes:
- No partitions in rooms
- Massive windows for lots of light
- Color schemes of two neutral colors
- Materials of chrome, steel, plastic, glass, ceramics, natural stone and textured wood
- Furniture and chandeliers in a simple geometric shape with a slight bend but not a complete spiral
- A few minimalist paintings for wall art
- Flat reflective surfaces
- Minimalist window treatments
- Scattered light using neon or halogen ceiling lamps
Minimalist rooms are all dominated by a lot of space created by removing any items that you don’t need for a specific purpose. The walls can be textured plaster, wide glossy tiles, wallpapered or painted or they may even be glass, concrete or natural stone if you wish. Ceilings are generally painted in white color and the carpet and flooring can be any type without a pattern in your basic color scheme. This includes laminate, polymer, plain carpet and ceramic granite tiles. All household items including kitchen appliances should be tucked away in cabinets and out of sight for the minimalist style.
What Role Does Minimalist Window Treatments Serve?
Window treatments in any room always serve as one of the key elements in a decor scheme. In addition, minimalism is no different from any other decor style. You can use them to start your design if you choose to start with the windows in your home or rental property. They are simple and unobtrusive window coverings so you can treat each room as a blank canvas and then build on them to complete a room.
The use of muted monochromatic colors in your window treatments is complementary to the style and this allows your other furnishings in your home to take the center stage. Guests won’t be staring at your lively patterned drapes in bright colors, but instead their eye will be drawn to your beautiful hardwood floors or an artistic geometrical shaped light fixture.
The minimalist interior design in whole brings calmness to any room and any space. Walking into a room with clean and simple lines gives your relief from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and it is shown to actually give you a calm feeling while soothing your nervous system. You can dress a big bay window in the right types of draperies and feel the calmness coming over you.
Simple and clean lines are always timeless making them a very efficient choice. You won’t have a need to change out your window treatments if you want a new decor style from time to time and this can save you valuable time and money in your quest for the newest decor style. Therefore, whatever style you choose, you can keep your minimalist window treatments.
Minimalist Window Treatment Ideas and How to Choose
Now that you understand the idea of this decor style, it’s time to choose your lovely window treatments for your home. You should consider all the following factors in order to choose what works best for you.
Calming Colors
The neutral color scheme in drapery panels is best for a minimalist appearance. All shades of white, gray, black and blue are the most popular because these shades when muted are associated with serenity. White and baby blue work really well together as they send the mind to looking out over the beach on a sunny day with puffy clouds.
One of the most popular and beautiful styles of minimalist window treatments is to enlist woven woods in the lighter colors. They are made from all natural grasses and fibers and woven together to give you a lot of interest and depth while allowing your other furnishings to take their place in the lime light. Woven woods fade into the background when you choose the lighter shades of tan or even near white. Another added advantage to woven wood shades is that they filter light but still allow tiny specks of light to enter your rooms between the weave patterns. The specks of light play on the solid colored walls in a room and appear much like tiny stars in the daytime when the sun is out. At night if you have an outdoor light or the moon shining in it makes a very romantic and serene scene. Any time that light plays off anything in your home; it will make your spaces look even larger.
Fluffy and Full or Slightly Full
The fullness of window treatments in the drapery panels refers to how much fabric is used in the width. It is considered fluffy and full when three times the width of the window is used in the drapery panels. The fullness is how the fabric hangs over your windows and how it looks. Less fullness seems to be better for the decor you are trying to achieve, but you should never use drapery panels that are the same width of the window. This results in a window covering that looks like you just hung a flat sheet over it and it’s certainly not attractive in the least. The best idea for fullness in a minimalist design is to have the fabric twice as wide as the width of the windows. This measurement gives you some interest but it isn’t too flat or too full to present you with an elegant appearance.
Pretty Pleat Styles
Pleat styles can be very formal and not all fit in with a minimalist decor on your window treatments. Fan pleats and goblet pleats are the most formal and these ornate folds at the tops of drapery panels would not fit with this style. Instead, you can opt for a simple box pleat style that is stylish and not too fancy, but it still gives you a bit of interest in your window treatments. If you want a little more texture in your room, you can still use the tailored pleat with a few more folds.
Heavenly Hardware
If you choose to go with woven wood shades or a Roman shade in a solid color, your drapery hardware will not show, so you can choose any simple and plain drapery rod you like. However, if you are considering drapery panels, you will want a simple geometric-shaped finial on the ends. You should choose a modest size and in a simple shape such as a basic ball or square on the ends. Another great option for your drapery panel hardware is the French return. It’s a drapery rod that is horizontal and straight on the front where the drapery panels hang and then it returns toward the wall to be mounted. It looks like a towel bar in a bathroom. The key is to choose a style without S-curves or fancy shapes, but a square or slightly curved return to the wall. These are quite classy drapery rods that will fit well in any window.
A Trio of Hardware Finishes
The minimalist approach in decor embraces all three of the most common hardware finishes. Matte black and bronze work well in a room that is filled with light to ground the entire room. Brass hardware gives you a bright pop of color in an otherwise neutral room to give a shiny appearance in a small manner to your window treatments of choice. Brass is warming and used often in these settings to avoid feeling too stark and plain. Oil rubbed bronze hardware works very well with any light colored linen drapery panels.
Window Covering Choices
You have several choices in window treatments that will remain in the style of minimalism. Plain neutral shades that are horizontal or vertical work as well as shades in woven wood or flat Roman shades. Ceiling to floor drapery panels work well on large windows too. You can choose pretty much whichever window covering you like for your windows throughout your home and they don’t all need to be the same and match each other as long as they are in the same neutral colors in a large space. You can choose other styles and neutral colors for your bedrooms and bathroom window coverings as you wish.
All of these ideas can get you started on making your home or rental property all that it can be and seem very inviting, calming and make it seem much larger in the minimalist style of decor.
