A Quick & Easy Room Darkening Shade

This was my daughter’s old bedroom in its staged and ready for sale look last Summer.  Before the holidays last year, we took our house off the market because we would have been unable to look at houses together if ours sold{due to hubby’s job}, and I wanted to be able to decorate for the holidays without having to worry about how it would affect the sale of my house.

Shortly after that, we found out that my daughter would be expecting her first child {our first grandchild} and we had her and her hubby come stay with us, where they took over her old room.   When we fixed this room up, I removed her purple roman shades {one of which was broken anyway}.  This “no shade” look was fine for an unoccupied room.    This room gets very bright now since we had painted it a wonderful yellow.  Being a north facing room the previous purple was not helping it.

However, when they moved in, I thought it was necessary to put something up, without spending a lot of money, that would darken the room so they wouldn’t be up at the crack of dawn.  I purchased brown black-out drapes from Target.  My daughter didn’t like the way they looked and she liked the orange ones.  While they sat on the side to be returned, I found a bunch of tension rods on a shelf in my basement, when I was down there looking for something else {doesn’t that always happen?}.   I suggested to her that we cut two of the panels from the brown black-out lined drapes down to the length of the actual window and use it as a shade.

See that sun coming in the one window above.  That is about 1:00 p.m.  Here is the second window ~ not as much sun yet. 

I left the top of the panels as they were and cut the bottom off after measuring my length.  The width was fine so I didn’t have to cut or sew that.  I sewed the bottom portion that I had cut leaving a pocket/hem wide enough to hold a tension rod.   The only sewing involved is sewing the bottom where you’ve cut and depending on your fabric you may be able to get away with hot glue or fabric glue.

With a tension rod at the top and a tension rod at the bottom we pretty much made a top down/bottom up shade of our own.  Just by moving one of the tension rods you could bring in some sunlight or none.  It worked out great for our temporary needs!  I think this is also a good idea for those places where you may not want to, or be able to, mount window treatments to a wall, such as in an apartment or even dorm room.

Linking this post up with the following linky parties:

Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps On The Porch

It’s So Very Creative at It’s So Very Cheri