Yep, I’m rather late to post for Week 5’s ORC (the posting window for guest bloggers is Wednesday at 11 PM through Sunday), but I wanted this post to go to my readers at my usual Saturday time this week.
I kinda miss it, ya know? But with client work and kid management, I just haven’t been able to do the two posts a week like I did in previous ORCs. Hope you understand!
But following this ORC, I have a lot of cool stuff coming up to show you — a big announcement, a new website and services launch, AND my own “Remodeling a Remuddle” kitchen series — so come on back for the usual Saturday coffee chat!
Anywho!
My No Plain Jane Powder Room is actually done! Whew! Photography happened this week, and I’m just waiting on the photos. In the meantime, I wanted to let you in on the details that I worked to really make that fabulous wallpaper shine.
Today — window treatments!!! A powder room is a funny little dilemma when it comes to treating the windows. If your window faces a public area (ours faces the driveway) you need privacy.
While you can get away with just a top treatment in a bathroom where the window is above waist level, our window is pretty tall and low to the floor — meaning that a shade would have to be raised and lowered every time someone used the loo if he/she didn’t want to basically urinate in public.
So we needed a bottom treatment, preferably one allowing light to come through. The obvious solutions that come to mind are either…
Cafe curtains …

(I like linen cafe curtains to be unlined, to allow the light to glow through!)
… or shutters.

However, we also have the dilemma that our powder room faces south and that the sun arcs up the through the highest portion of the window, streaming in and blinding whomever is sitting down to do his business.
So we also needed a top treatment that looked stylistically appropriate.
With inset cafe curtains or shutters, you can also do a Roman shade (or faux shade, e.g. valance) as well — technically, it could be pulled all the way down without hitting any inset lower treatment.
Romans and bottom treatments look pretty sweet when paired, anyway!




We had shutters on the window before, and I really didn’t mind them. The problem was that I thought having them painted the trim color — my dark, herby green — as well as the door would make the room feel really heavy. I needed to balance all my color with some fresh and airy WHITE!
So that’s what I’m doing — a combined treatment using a faux Roman shade up top and unlined linen cafe curtains on the bottom.
Here’s a little sneak peek!
And a little more detail to tease you for next week’s reveal!
Head back over to the One Room Challenge to check out everyone else’s progress! And come back next week for the full, albeit TINY (because it is only 18 sf, after all!) reveal!
‘Til next week!
-Amy
6 thoughts on “Window Treatments for Privacy (and Light!) in the Bathroom — No Plain Jane Powder Room (ORC Week 5)”
Very much a fun little place to take a (pee) break!
Definitely! And it’s warm now, too!
Your ORC is looking great! Love the trim color and wallpaper. Can’t wait to see! I love cafe curtains too, always a classic for a situation like this. I just recommended them for a consultation client who had heavy valances that cut off the top half of the window, where they didn’t need privacy anyway! 🙂 Will check back for your final reveal!
Thanks for following along, Carla! I hope I make you proud!
Love the detail on the faux roman shade. Any chance you might do a tutorial on how to DIY a shade like that? Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mary! I’m not really a DIYer anymore (the kids killed it in me), but you would do it the same way you make a Roman shade, just with less fabric and you don’t need an operable lift system. I had mine trimmed with a stripe of dark green fabric.
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