Linen Curtains & Wool Rug Installation in Maple 3, Dubai Hills Estate

How the project started

The owners sent us a WhatsApp message on a Saturday night. They both work from home, and the living room doubles as their daytime workspace. The floor is pale porcelain with almost nothing soft on it, so their voices bounced around during calls. A wall of two tall windows took the sun from about 4 p.m., and a glare crossed both laptop screens every afternoon.

We visited on the Monday before the install. We marked the rug outline on the floor with painter's tape and left it there overnight, so the owners could walk around it and judge the size in daily life. They settled on 3 x 4 m, which lets the front legs of both sofas sit on the rug and keeps the coffee table fully on it. We measured each window width and drop twice, and used a detector to find the concrete above the windows, because linen curtains with rings are heavy and the rod had to go into something solid.

Fabric and colour choices

The villa is cool in tone, with white walls and pale floors, so the owners wanted texture and some warmth without a big block of colour. They took swatches from our book and kept three in the room for a week, holding them against the sofas at different times of day.

The curtains are a heavy ivorylinen with a rough, slubbed weave, hung over a white voile sheer with a fine open thread. The rug is hand-tufted wool in charcoal and sand, with a low pile and an irregular pattern. The double rod is a champagne-bronze finish with matching rings.

How the two days went

Day 1: 

1. We covered the porcelain floor and checked the taped outline against the finished rug size.
2. The rug pad went down first, cut slightly smaller than the rug, then the rug on top, with double-sided tape at the corners.
3. We drilled the brackets into the concrete above the windows and fixed the double rod.
4. We left the room for the owners to use that evening, so the wool could settle flat overnight.

Day 2: 

1. We hung the sheer on the back rod and the linen on the front rod, ring by ring.
2. We set the eyelet folds by hand, so the curtain falls in even, round waves.
3. We adjusted the stack-back so both windows clear completely when the curtains are open.
4. We checked the hem height at three points, then walked through the room with the owners and showed them how to draw each layer.

Linen curtains and a white sheer on a double rod

The room needed a curtain with real weight, because a thin one would not calm the glare or soften the sound. We usedeyelet curtains in the ivory linen, with a whitesheer behind them on its own rod. The owners can draw only the sheer to cut the glare and still see the garden, or close both layers for the evening.

A wall of tall windows carries a lot of fabric, so the rod matters as much as the cloth. A thick rod with a centre bracket was the right choice here, and thetypes of curtain rods differ mainly in diameter, finish and how much weight they can take over a long span.

Wool rug for the living room floor

The rug is a hand-tuftedwool rug in charcoal and sand. Wool soaks up sound well, which is why the room sounds softer and the owners' voices no longer carry across the floor. Underneath it, aproperly fitted carpet sits on a pad cut slightly smaller than the rug, so the edges lie flat and nobody trips on a lifted corner.

Curtains cut from figures taken on site hang better than ready-made ones, which is the main reasoncustom made curtains fit so closely. The crew that measured is also the crew that hangs them, so thecurtain fixing and installation never goes to someone who has not seen the room.

Need a curtain service at home ? Send us your room details and a few photos. We will review them and tell you what would work before you commit to anything.