Grouped Windows, One Big Run of Fabric
The bungalows of Riverside and Rumford were built between the wars and just after, and many of them have their windows set in groups: three or four sash side by side that read as one opening and are usually dressed as one. That single wide treatment ends up as the largest piece of fabric in the room, which is why custom fabric decor in East Providence, RI so often starts at a grouped window and works outward to the sofa, the chairs and the bed.
The town has other kinds of house too. Rumford’s colonials have tidier, separate windows. Watchemoket’s older housing has tall sash in compact rooms. At Kettle Point, newer construction brings open plans and big glass. Each needs the fabric handled differently.
- Throw pillows, duvet covers and some upholstery
- Picked to suit the treatment on your grouped windows
- A showroom in Swansea with cloths to compare
Our Fabric Work for East Providence
Pillows cut from the window cloth
When one wide drape covers a group of windows, a few pillows in the same cloth bring it across the room to the seating.
Bedding to suit the bedroom window
Duvet covers chosen with the bedroom curtains, so the bed and the window are planned in one sitting.
Some upholstery
A limited range of upholstery work, linked to the window fabric. Ask us about your piece before planning around it.
Custom Fabric Decor in East Providence, RI, House by House
East Providence is really several towns’ worth of housing in one. What suits a Riverside bungalow will look odd in a Kettle Point living room, so here is how we approach custom fabric decor in East Providence, RI for each of the main kinds of house.
Riverside and Rumford bungalows
The bungalows are low, wide and friendly, with a front porch, a living room that runs across the front of the house and, very often, a group of windows looking out over the porch. Inside, the woodwork is usually simple and solid, sometimes with built-in cabinets or a bench beside the fireplace.
A bungalow living room is rarely large, and the grouped window takes up a big share of one wall. Whatever cloth hangs there dominates the room. So the pillows and seating are best chosen as supporting players: a plain in the main colour of the window cloth, a small check or stripe that includes it, and perhaps one pillow in the window cloth itself to tie everything together.
Dressing a grouped window as one
Treating a group of windows as a single opening is usually the right call. A pair of panels at the outer ends, with a shade or a sheer across the glass between them, makes the group look intentional rather than busy. That also simplifies the fabric decor, because there is one cloth to coordinate with rather than three.
When the group sits behind the sofa, the pillows are seen against the window fabric all the time. Pick them a shade or two deeper or lighter than the panels, so they stand out instead of disappearing into the backdrop.
Built-in benches and window seats
Some bungalows have a built-in bench under the grouped window or beside the fireplace. A run of pillows along it, in the window cloth or a companion to it, turns a hard seat into the spot everyone heads for. Since that bench sits right at the glass, the pillows there catch more sun than anything else in the room, and we will help you choose a cloth that copes with that.
Bungalow bedrooms
Bungalow bedrooms are often tucked under a sloping roof or set at the back of a single storey, with smaller windows than the living room. The curtains there tend to be modest, so the duvet cover becomes the main fabric in the room. Choosing it at the same time as the curtains, from the same palette, gives a small room a calm, finished look.
Rumford colonials
The colonials in Rumford are a step more formal: a center or side hall, a living room with a fireplace, a separate dining room, and evenly spaced single windows rather than groups. With several separate windows in a room, the treatment is repeated rather than run together, and each window carries less fabric.
That gives the soft furnishings more room to speak. A pattern on the sofa pillows can be livelier than the panels, or a plain cloth at the windows can be answered with a printed duvet cover upstairs. In a dining room with a pair of windows, two pillows on a window seat or host chairs in the panel cloth finish the room without crowding it.
Watchemoket’s older houses
Watchemoket’s housing is older than the bungalows, with taller sash windows in compact rooms and, often, less daylight. Tall narrow windows carry long, slim panels, which means the window cloth covers height rather than width. Pillows in that same cloth repeat the pattern at eye level, where it is easier to enjoy.
In rooms with limited light, pale and lightly textured fabrics help. A pillow with a soft sheen reflects more light than a matte, dark one, and a cream or soft yellow duvet cover can brighten a north-facing bedroom considerably.
Enclosed porches and sun rooms
Some of the Riverside and Rumford bungalows have had their front porches closed in over the years, turning them into a sun room with windows on three sides. These rooms are full of light and usually furnished with a daybed, a wicker settee or a couple of easy chairs. Pillows there take a lot of sun and a lot of handling, so removable covers in a sturdy cotton or a woven cloth make sense. A stripe or a small print drawn from the living room’s grouped-window fabric connects the porch to the house behind it, which matters because the two rooms are usually seen through the same front door.
Kitchens with a window over the sink
The bungalow kitchen often has its own small group of windows over the sink, looking onto the back yard. A café curtain or a simple valance there, in a cheerful cotton, can be repeated in a pillow or two on a kitchen bench or in the breakfast nook. It is a small touch that makes a modest kitchen look cared for.
Ready to Get Started? Book Your Free Quote
Call the Swansea store for a free quote, or come and see the samples in person.
Kettle Point and the Newer Houses
The newer construction at Kettle Point is a different world again. Open-plan living spaces, large windows, and finishes that tend to start out neutral: white walls, pale floors, grey or beige surfaces. Many of these rooms look out toward the water.
Bringing character to a neutral room
A brand-new house can feel a little anonymous until fabric arrives. Custom fabric decor is one of the quickest ways to give it personality, because pillows, bedding and a few upholstered pieces carry colour and pattern without any building work. Choose a palette for the whole open space, perhaps two main colours and an accent, and let each area of the room pick from it.
Open plans and long sightlines
In an open plan, the living area, the dining table and the kitchen are all seen at once. If each area has unrelated fabrics, the space looks disjointed. If one colour runs from the window panels to the sofa pillows to the dining chairs, the eye travels through the whole room easily. That is the real value of planning the decor and the windows together.
Large glass and strong light
Big windows mean a lot of light falling on furniture placed near them. Colours that fade quickly in sun are best kept for pillows away from the glass, and sturdier cloths used on seating that sits in the light. We will tell you which of your choices are likely to hold up.
Bedrooms with a view of the water
Main bedrooms in the newer Kettle Point houses often face the water through a wide window or a slider to a balcony. The curtains there need to close fully for sleep, and they are usually generous lengths of cloth, which makes them the obvious partner for the bed. A duvet cover in a lighter weight from the same colour family keeps the bed from looking heavy against the bright glass in the morning, while a couple of pillows in the curtain fabric itself link the two.
Where the walls and floors are pale, a bedroom like this can take a stronger colour on the bed than you might expect. A deep navy or a soft sea green cover, against white walls and pale curtains, gives the room a focal point without any change to the house itself. Guest rooms in these houses are usually plainer still, and a printed cover with a matching pair of pillows is often all they need to feel welcoming. Because bedding is easy to change, it is also the least risky place to try a colour you are unsure about.
How a Project Moves Along
We stay in touch with you all the way through. A typical East Providence order looks like this.
- You ring through the call button or use the form, mention the rooms and the windows, and book a free quote.
- We discuss the house: how the grouped windows are arranged, how the rooms open into each other, which pieces of furniture stay.
- You visit the showroom and try pillow and bedding cloths against the window fabrics you are considering.
- We measure at your house, treating each group of windows as one opening where that suits it.
- A quote arrives showing every piece for the room, then the order is made from the cloths you picked, and our installers hang the window treatments.
A simple recipe for mixing patterns
A wide bungalow living room or an open Kettle Point space can carry three or four fabrics comfortably if they follow a plan. Start with one large print, usually at the window. Add a smaller print or a stripe that shares a colour with it. Add a plain or two. Then add one texture, a velvet or a chunky weave, for depth. Kept to that recipe, even a lively room looks considered, and it leaves room to add a piece later without starting again.
Getting the details right
In a modest bungalow room, pillows are seen from a few feet away, so the fabric finishing shows. We talk through how the edges are done, where a big motif lands on each pillow, and which way a stripe runs compared with the panels on the grouped window. It takes a few minutes and saves a pillow that looks slightly off for years.
Duvet covers for the bedroom
Bedding goes through the laundry constantly, which rules out some of the prettiest curtain cloths. If the fabric you love for the bedroom window is delicate, we put a tougher cloth in the same colour on the duvet cover and use the delicate one for shams that rarely need washing. In a bungalow bedroom under the eaves, where the bed fills much of the floor, the cover is worth getting right.
Upholstery, kept simple
Some upholstery sits within what we do, and it is always chosen around the window fabric. Rather than list particular items here, we ask you to tell us about the piece, or show us a photo, and we answer honestly about whether it is a job for us.
Bungalow care
The bench under a grouped window is the sunniest seat in the house, so swap and turn those pillows regularly to spread the fading. Shake out porch pillows after a summer of use. Launder covers the way their cloth allows; we go over this when you choose them. If something is spilled or snagged, call before trying to treat it.
See the Cloths Together
A fabric chosen from a website almost never looks the way you expect when it arrives. In the showroom you can drape a pillow cloth across the panel fabric for your grouped windows, step back, and see how the two look from across a room. It is the surest way to get a bungalow living room right first time.
From East Providence the trip to Swansea is a short one. Bring a photo of the windows, a cushion you want to keep, or a paint colour. If your curtains already hang and you only need pillows or bedding, a snapshot of them in daylight gets us started.
Windows and decor in one plan
For the panels themselves, see custom drapes in East Providence, which covers grouped windows and tall sash, or Roman shades for East Providence homes for single windows where a shade sits neatly in the frame. All our services in town are on the East Providence window treatments page, and the main custom fabric decor page shows the whole range.
About Window Works
Window Works is a family store, founded in Swansea in 1988 and run today by the second generation. For over 37 years it has fitted out houses across the SouthCoast of Massachusetts and the Rhode Island East Bay, from between-the-wars bungalows to brand-new builds. Our approach to custom fabric decor in East Providence, RI is the same as anywhere: one team, one plan for the window and the room.
- Specialists in window treatments, with a long memory for bungalow windows
- A measuring visit to your home, and installation by our own crew
- Regular updates from us until the last piece is in
- Warranties are available on the products we sell
Questions from East Providence
My bungalow has three windows in a row. Should the pillows match the curtains?
One pillow in the curtain cloth ties things together. The others look better in a plain or a small pattern that shares its colour, so the window stays the main feature.
How do I add colour to a new house at Kettle Point?
Choose a palette for the whole open space, two main colours and an accent, and carry it from the window panels to the pillows and bedding.
Will pale fabrics help a dim room in an older house?
Yes. Pale cloths with a slight sheen bounce more light around than dark, matte ones, which helps a room with tall narrow windows.
Is upholstery something you do?
To a degree. It is limited and always tied to the window fabric, so describe the piece and we will tell you whether it fits.
Is the quote free?
Yes. Ask through the call button or the form, and mention which rooms you are planning.
Where to Begin
The call button is the fastest way to a free quote for custom fabric decor in East Providence, RI. While you are on the phone, you can also set a time for us to measure the windows in your home, or ask about installation for the panels and shades that go with your new pillows and bedding. If you prefer, leave your details on the form and we will get back to you. The contact page has directions if you want to see the fabrics first. Window Works is rated 5.0 by Google reviewers.