Properly designing for thermal curtains results in a tidier look, and no loss of your view through the window

Though not often discussed, curtains are an important design consideration for any energy efficient house. Specifically, thermal curtains are the way to go if you want to help keep your house warm in winter (and cool in the summer), and save energy for heating and cooling. These insulative curtains require some forethought, and in a natural building such as a straw bale house with recessed windows, it’s important to think about how to hang curtains and curtain rods before your house is even ready to live in. How you decide to hang your curtains and rods will affect your window framing and trim, so you really want to plan ahead to ensure the most functional and aesthetically appealing result.

Here’s how we designed the windows in our straw bale house specifically for heavy thermal curtains.

How to Hang Curtains & Curtain Rods

Thermal curtains can be made of a variety of materials, including recycled comforters, wool batting, or some fancy thermal batting with a built-in reflective layer. Regardless of how you make the curtains, they will most certainly be bulkier than a single sheet of fabric when rolled away.

We decided the most practical way to “store” the curtains when not in use would be to roll them up above the window. The consideration here, of course, is the bulkiness of the rolled curtain, but the solution is simple. In order to avoid blocking a portion of the window (and view) with the rolled-up curtain, we made sure the header above the window would be wide enough so that the curtain could be totally up and out of the way. By the way, I have to give credit to our friend Mark for some of this great forward thinking. (There’s your credit, Mark!)

And so, even the smallest windows have a large header, at least a 2×6 (or bigger for wider windows). Those headers are of course trimmed out with an equally large piece of wood (in our case, black walnut trim).

Accounting for bulky curtains means wider trim above the window to accommodate the curtain while it’s stowed away

I’m sure there are a million ways to go about hanging your curtains, but we took another tip from Mark here and used rebar for our curtain rods. It’s a pretty brilliant suggestion, I must say. (What else can you do with those leftover lengths of rebar anyway?)

Painted rebar, a perfect (and cheap) solution for curtain rods

Rebar is plenty stiff and strong enough to hold the extra weight of the curtains, and certainly durable over the long haul, too. Best of all, it’s inexpensive. In our case, we scrubbed off any rust and painted the rebar a flat black.

To hang the rods, we purchased some dark metallic coat hooks to match the newly blackened rebar. Curtain hooks and hanging hardware can be expensive, but coat hooks are not. The rebar simply sits nestled in the hook. Simple enough.

The final result is great — we’ve got strong, inexpensive curtain rods and the curtains can be completely rolled up and out of the way, without blocking any portion of the window. This may seem like a miniscule detail in the grand scheme of  things, but attention to specifics such as these are a feature, and will be appreciated for many years to come.

A look at the finished curtains stored above the window, attractive and functional