Yesterday, I got all of the grasscloth wallpaper up in the bedroom, but I didn’t quite finish the wallpaper in the foyer. I’ll need one more day to do that. In the meantime, I’m looking ahead to my next project, which will be the draperies. I thought I might do the headboard next, but for some reason, the fabric still isn’t here (even though I paid for express processing/shipping so that it would be here last Friday). No problem. At least I have all of my drapery fabric, so I’ll just move on to those next.
The fabric that I bought for the draperies is a beautiful teal velvet. But the interesting thing with velvet is that you can get two very different looks from one fabric depending on how you hang the fabric. Since velvet has a nap to it, meaning that the fibers of the fabric lie in one direction, that means that it will look different depending on the direction you view it. That means I can get two really different looks with this fabric depending on the direction in which I sew the fabric.
I haven’t had time to install the curtain rods yet, so I just draped the fabric over my ladder to get an idea of how the draperies would look. Here’s how the fabric looks with the nap of the velvet going up. You can see how hanging the fabric with the nap going up gives the fabric a deep, dark, rich look. Going this direction, the draperies would be a little bit darker than the walls.
And here’s how the fabric looks with the nap going down. This direction will make the draperies a little bit lighter than the walls.
Here’s a close up look of the two options side-by-side.
I backed up to the entrance of the bedroom to see if the difference between the two options was as stark as it is when standing close to the fabric. Here’s it is from a distance with the nap going up and the fabric appearing darker.
And here’s a look from a distance with the nap going down and the fabric appearing lighter.
And here’s a side-by-side view of the two options from a distance…
In my mock up of the room, you can see that I went with the darker option…
Just going by the look of the two, I personally prefer the darker option, but the decision isn’t quite so simple as deciding which one looks better. There are other factors that give me pause. The main factor is that hanging velvet with the nap going up will almost certainly lead to them catching dust more easily. I’m trying to decide if that’s really going to be an issue or not. Of course, my vacuum cleaner has an upholstery attachment, and it would take only a few minutes to use that to vacuum the draperies when needed. All of my draperies, even those that aren’t velvet, need to be vacuumed periodically, especially when I’m working on big projects and creating a lot of dust in the house. Hopefully, I’m nearing the end of creating dust on this side of the house, so maybe under normal living circumstances, it won’t even be an issue.
But I really think they will look so much richer and prettier if they’re darker, right? I also have to consider that the recliner is going to be lighter than the walls. So if the draperies are made to look lighter, it might look like I tried to match the draperies to the recliner, and if they’re “off” even slightly, I think the difference will stand out way more than if I make the draperies so that they appear darker and make it look like an intentional decision NOT to make them match the recliner.
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Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
