High Windows, Big Rooms, Older Streets
In the newer subdivisions off Mendon Road, the two-storey entry window is the hardest reach in town: a tall pane above the front door, lighting a foyer that rises the full height of the house. Rooms like that change how fabric works. The window treatment up high is seen from a distance, while everything you touch, the sofa, the bench, the bed upstairs, sits far below it. Custom fabric decor in Cumberland, RI is often about bringing the colour of that high window down to where people actually live.
Elsewhere in town, the colonials around Diamond Hill and Arnold Mills have more traditional rooms, and the older housing in Valley Falls has smaller rooms and simpler windows. Each calls for its own approach.
- Throw pillows, duvet covers and some upholstery
- Planned with the window fabric, high windows included
- Fabrics to see at our Swansea showroom
Fabric Work for Cumberland Homes
Pillows that bring colour down
When the main window sits high above the room, pillows carry its colour to eye level, where you sit and see it every day.
Duvet covers for upstairs bedrooms
Bedding chosen with the bedroom curtains or shades, in cloth that copes with the wash.
Some upholstery
A limited amount of upholstery work, chosen around the window fabric. Tell us about the piece and we will be straight with you.
Custom Fabric Decor in Cumberland, RI Under a High Ceiling
A room that rises two storeys behaves differently from an ordinary one. Light pours in from above, the walls are tall and often bare, and furniture can look small in all that space. Here is how we think about custom fabric decor in Cumberland, RI in the tall entries and great rooms of the newer houses.
The two-storey foyer
The entry window in these houses is seen from three places: from the front door as you come in, from the upstairs landing or balcony as you look down, and from outside at night when the lights are on. The treatment on it, often a shade that can be raised and lowered, is usually plain and practical, chosen for light control rather than decoration.
That leaves the foyer floor to carry the fabric. A bench by the door with a pair of pillows, or a chair at the foot of the stairs with one, in a colour that matches or complements the shade above, ties the high window to the floor below. It is a small amount of fabric, but it is the first thing anyone sees.
Great rooms and their tall windows
Many of the subdivision houses also have a great room with a high ceiling and a wall of tall windows, sometimes with smaller windows stacked above. Fabric on the lower windows may be full-length panels; the upper ones usually take shades or stay bare. Either way, the room has a lot of vertical space and relatively little fabric.
Pillows and upholstery are how a great room becomes comfortable. A large sectional or a pair of sofas, dressed with generous pillows in two or three cloths drawn from the window fabric, gives the room a centre. Bigger pillows, and more of them, suit the scale; small ones disappear.
Seen from the balcony
In houses with an open landing or balcony above the great room or the foyer, the room below is seen from above as well as at eye level. From that angle, the tops of the sofas and the pattern on the pillows become a kind of carpet. Strong, simple colour reads well from above; tiny patterns blur. It is worth looking down from the landing when you plan the pillows. We often suggest taking a photo from up there before you visit the showroom, so you can picture the cloths from both angles. A rug, a sofa colour and a pillow pattern that work at eye level do not always work from above, and the photo shows you at a glance.
Scale and pattern in a tall room
Tall rooms suit larger patterns. A bold print on full-length panels, with a coordinating print on the pillows and a plain on the sofa itself, fills a great room without cluttering it. If you prefer plain panels, use the pillows for pattern: a large-scale print, a wide stripe, or a mix of both in the same colours.
Light from above
High windows bring in light from above, which makes a great room feel bright but also means sunlight reaches deep into the room and lands on furniture for long stretches. Pillows on a sofa in the path of that light will fade over time. Choosing cloths that handle light, in colours that fade gently, helps. We will tell you which of your choices are likely to hold up.
Dressing a large sectional
Great rooms in the subdivision houses often centre on a big sectional sofa. A long expanse of upholstered seat can look flat without pillows to break it up, and it takes more of them than a standard sofa. A good rule is to group pillows at the corners and the ends rather than spacing them evenly, with the largest at the back and smaller ones in front. Use the window cloth on one or two, a companion print on others, and a plain or textured cloth to fill in. Planned like this, custom fabric decor in Cumberland, RI turns a big, neutral sectional into the warmest spot in the house.
A colour thread from the foyer
Because a two-storey foyer opens onto so many rooms, it works as a hub for colour. Whatever shade you choose for the foyer bench pillows can reappear in the great room, the dining room and the stair landing, so the house feels connected as you move through it. It does not need to be the same cloth everywhere; one shared colour is enough. Starting with the foyer and working outward is a practical order for planning a whole house.
Diamond Hill and Arnold Mills Colonials
Traditional rooms with familiar windows
The colonials around Diamond Hill and Arnold Mills have the classic plan: a front hall, a living room and dining room either side or front and back, a family room off the kitchen, and bedrooms upstairs. Windows are evenly spaced and of familiar sizes, usually two to a wall.
That rhythm suits a matching approach. The living room might carry full panels on each window, with pillows on the sofa and armchairs in the panel cloth and a companion print. The dining room, across the hall, can take a different drapery that shares a colour, so the two rooms look related from the hall.
Family rooms off the kitchen
The family room is the hardest-used room in most colonials. Pillows there get leaned on, thrown and sat on, so tight weaves, mid-tones and small patterns are practical. Removable covers make life easier. A slider or French door to the back yard often brings lots of light, and the pillows nearest it should be in a cloth that handles sun.
Colonial bedrooms
Upstairs, colonial bedrooms usually have two windows, sometimes on two walls. Curtains there are often lined for sleep, and the bed is the other large fabric surface. A duvet cover chosen with the curtains, in the same print or in a plain that picks up its colour, gives each room a finished look. Children’s rooms can carry the fun on the bedding alone, so a change later means swapping a cover rather than redoing the windows.
Valley Falls
The older housing in Valley Falls is a different scale entirely: smaller rooms, simpler windows, often modest trim. Fabric in these rooms has to work harder with less space.
Making small rooms feel larger
In a small room, lighter colours and fewer patterns help. A plain or softly patterned curtain, pillows in one or two coordinating cloths, and a pale duvet cover in the bedroom keep the room feeling open. One strong accent, a single bright pillow or a coloured throw cushion on a chair, gives it life without crowding it.
Front rooms close to the street
Some of the older Valley Falls houses sit nearer the road than the colonials or the subdivision homes, so the front room needs a little privacy as well as light. A sheer or a light-filtering shade at the glass, with plain side panels, solves that simply. With the window kept quiet, the sofa pillows can take the stronger colour. In a small front room, two or three pillows are plenty, in a print and a plain that share a shade, so the room looks considered rather than busy. Keeping the backs of the panels in a neutral lining also keeps the house looking tidy from the pavement.
Simple windows, honest fabric
Where windows are simple and the trim plain, the fabric does the decorating. A well-chosen print at the window, picked up on the sofa pillows and perhaps on the bed upstairs, gives an older house warmth and personality that its woodwork alone does not provide.
Colonial dining rooms
The dining room in a Diamond Hill or Arnold Mills colonial is usually the most formal room in the house and the least used during the day. When it does come into use, it is often by candle or lamplight, so judge the fabric in that light. A pair of pillows on a window bench, or on the end chairs, in the drapery cloth, is enough decor for most dining rooms. More than that and the room starts to feel like a sitting room.
A room over the garage
If your house has a bonus room over the garage, it probably has odd-shaped walls, a dormer or two, and a mix of uses: a den one year, a guest room the next, a playroom in between. Fabric that can change with it is the sensible choice. Plain curtains or shades at the windows, and the personality on pillows and a daybed cover that can be swapped, let the room move on without redoing the windows.
Valley Falls bedrooms
Bedrooms in the older Valley Falls houses are often compact, with a single window and limited wall space for furniture. The bed takes up much of the room, so its cover is the room’s main fabric. A light, washable cotton in a soft pattern, with two pillows in a stronger shade picked from the curtain, keeps a small bedroom from feeling crowded.
Ready to Get Started? Book Your Free Quote
Call the Swansea store for a free quote, or come and see the samples in person.
What to Expect
We check in with you at every turn, and nothing is made until you have signed off on it. For a Cumberland house, an order typically runs in this order.
- Get in touch by phone or through the form, say which rooms are on your mind, and we schedule a free quote.
- Together we walk through each room on paper first, including any two-storey window and how it looks from the landing above.
- You spend time with the cloths at the showroom, pairing pillow and bedding fabrics with the window fabrics you are leaning toward.
- Our measuring visit covers every window, with the high entry and great room windows given the extra care they need.
- You go through a quote that lists each item, and decide whether to do everything at once or start with one room.
- When you give the go-ahead, the pieces are made and our team returns to install the window treatments, ladders and all.
Clean lines for a big room
In a great room, pillows are seen from across a big space and from the balcony above. That makes the fabric finishing more noticeable than you might think: a crisp edge, a motif that sits square in the middle, a stripe that lines up neatly with the stripes at the window. Clean finishing reads clearly from a distance; sloppy finishing looks worse the further away you are. We agree each detail with you up front.
Covers that stand up to the laundry
A bed in a family house sees a lot of washing. If the cloth that suits your bedroom curtains is not washable, we pair it with a sturdy, launderable cloth in the same colour for the duvet cover, and use the curtain fabric on a couple of shams where it rarely needs cleaning.
Upholstery
A limited range of upholstery work is part of what we do, and every piece is chosen around the window fabric. Since furniture varies so much, we leave particular items off this page. Tell us what you have, or show us a photo, and we will give you a frank yes or no.
Keeping things looking fresh
A sunlit great room fades pillows on the window side first; swap their positions every few weeks. Zip-off covers on family-room pillows make spills a minor event. Launder bedding the way its cloth allows, which we explain at the time. Before treating any mark you are unsure of, give us a ring.
The windows to go with it
For panels and curtains, see custom drapes in Cumberland, and for shades on standard colonial windows, Roman shades for Cumberland homes. Everything we offer in town is listed on the Cumberland window treatments page, and the main custom fabric decor page covers our fabric work throughout the 25 towns we serve.
Who You Are Working With
Window Works is a family business that began in Swansea in 1988, and the second generation runs it today. In over 37 years we have worked in every kind of house on both sides of the state line, from mill-village homes to new subdivisions with soaring entries.
- A seasoned team of window treatment specialists
- Every window measured in your home, the high ones too, and fitted by our own installers
- Updates from us at each stage, through to the finish
- Warranties available on the products we sell
Our Swansea showroom lets you compare the cloths side by side before deciding anything.
Questions from Cumberland
How do I bring colour into a two-storey foyer?
Keep the high window practical and add the colour lower down: a pillow or two on a bench or a chair near the stairs, in a cloth that relates to the shade above.
What size of pillow suits a great room?
Bigger than usual, and generally more of them. Small pillows vanish beneath a high ceiling.
Can you measure and install the window above my front door?
Yes. High windows are measured at the house like every other, and our installers fit them.
What about upholstery?
We do a limited amount, always tied to the window fabric. Describe the item and we will tell you whether it fits what we do.
Does the quote cost anything?
No, it is free. Ask through the call button or the form.
Let Us Know What You Have in Mind
A free quote for custom fabric decor in Cumberland, RI is one press of the call button away. On that call you can also arrange for us to measure in your home or ask about installation, high windows included. Or fill in the form and we will be in touch. Prefer to start with the fabric? Directions to the showroom are on the contact page. Google reviewers give Window Works 5.0.