Custom Fabric Decor in Providence, RI

Getting the Scale Right for Custom Fabric Decor in Providence, RI

The single most common mistake in a tall East Side room is fabric that is too small. A pillow sized for a low-ceilinged ranch disappears on a sofa beneath a window that climbs most of the way to a high ceiling. A tiny print that looks charming in a swatch turns to a blur from across a big parlour. Good custom fabric decor in Providence, RI starts by matching the scale of the fabric to the scale of the room.

Pattern scale against a long drape

When a drape falls from just below a high ceiling to the floor, its pattern repeats many times down the length of the panel. A large print reads clearly at that size, and a pillow in the same print, cut so the motif sits in the middle, carries it to the sofa. A small print on that same drape can look busy, and pillows in it can look fussy.

If you prefer a quieter window, a plain drape in a rich colour lets the pillows take a larger pattern instead. Either way, one big pattern in the room usually looks better than several small ones competing.

Pillow size and number

Tall rooms suit larger pillows and, often, more of them. A deep sofa in a Victorian parlour can carry generous square pillows at the back with a smaller rectangular one in front. In a smaller Colonial Revival sitting room, three medium pillows may be plenty. We will talk through the size and arrangement with you, because the right answer depends on the furniture as much as the room.

East Side Victorians

The Victorians on the East Side are generous houses: high-ceilinged parlours, bay windows, ornate mouldings, and often a library or a back parlour as well as the main front room. These rooms can carry richness. Velvets, damasks, cloths with a sheen and deep, saturated colours look at home against dark woodwork and tall windows.

A Victorian bay, dressed in full drapes with perhaps a shade behind them, is the natural anchor of the room. A settee or a pair of chairs set in the bay with pillows in the drapery cloth turns the bay into its own small room. If the bay has a built-in seat, pillows along it in the same cloth make the whole bay read as one piece.

Libraries and back parlours

Many of these houses have a second, smaller sitting room or library at the back, often with darker panelling and fewer windows. These are cosy rooms, and they suit warm, heavy cloths: wool plaids, corduroy, a velvet in a deep green or burgundy. A reading chair with a pillow in one of those, beside a window dressed in the same family of colours, makes a room people want to sit in.

Bedrooms on College Hill

Upstairs in the East Side houses, the bedrooms keep the tall sash and much of the ceiling height of the rooms below. That means bedroom curtains are long too, and often lined to close out the early light. With that much cloth at the window, the bed is the one other large surface in the room, and choosing the duvet cover with the curtains makes the biggest single difference to how the room feels.

Some prefer the cover and the curtains in the same print, which suits a grand main bedroom. Others like a plain cover in the curtain’s ground colour, with a pair of shams in the print. In a guest room, a cheerful cover with plain curtains is easy to live with and easy to change.

Dining rooms for long evenings

East Side dining rooms tend to be formal, high, and used mostly by lamplight. Colours shift once the sun goes down: a red can turn brown, a grey can go flat. It is worth picturing your fabrics by evening light before you settle on them; a photo of the room after dark helps. Pillows on a window seat or a pair of host chairs, in the drapery cloth, carry the room’s colour around the table without adding clutter.

Halls and stair landings

Victorian halls often climb past a landing window that is seen from the front door and from the floor above. A shade inside that frame, with a single long panel or a pair of short ones, keeps it simple, and a cushion or pillow on a bench below, in the same cloth, gives the stair a pause. It is a small piece of custom fabric decor in Providence, RI that visitors see first.

Colonial Revivals on Blackstone Boulevard

The Colonial Revival houses along Blackstone Boulevard are more measured than the Victorians: symmetrical fronts, evenly spaced windows, a center hall with rooms either side. Their rooms are tall and well lit, with crisp white trim. Fabric in these rooms tends to look best when it is gracious rather than heavy: a linen or a silk-look cloth at the window, a stripe or a refined floral, and pillows that repeat or answer those.

Symmetry helps here. A pair of windows either side of a fireplace, each with matching drapes, can be echoed by pairs of pillows on a sofa or on two facing armchairs. The room looks composed, as the house intended.

Historic-district review and what shows from the street

Historic-district review on the East Side is mostly concerned with what is seen from outside. That makes the backs of drapes and the colour of any lining worth thinking about, since that is the side passers-by see. A neutral lining keeps the front of the house calm whatever colour the drapes are on the room side. Pillows, duvet covers and upholstery are entirely inside, so they are where you can be as bold as you like.

How We Take an Order From Start to Finish

We keep in touch with you from the first call until the last piece is in place. In Providence, most orders run along these lines.

1. Get in touch through the call button or the form, say which rooms you are planning, and book your free quote.
2. We talk through the rooms: ceiling height, the drop of each window, the bay or the run of sash, and what furniture you are keeping.
3. At the showroom, you hold pillow and bedding cloths up against the drapery fabric and judge how its pattern will read at full height.
4. We measure every window at the house, top to floor, because no two tall sash are quite the same.
5. You get a quote listing each piece, decide what to order now, and the pieces are made from your chosen cloths before our installers hang the window treatments.

Triple-Deckers in Federal Hill and Elmhurst

The triple-deckers through Federal Hill and Elmhurst are built around a simple plan: one floor per household, a front room in a bay overlooking the street, a run of rooms down one side, and a kitchen at the back opening onto a porch. They have high-ish ceilings and good windows, but light comes mainly from the front and the back, so the middle rooms can be dim.

The front room bay

The front room usually has a three-window bay looking down on the street. It is the brightest room on the floor and the one most visible from outside. A treatment that runs around the bay, with sheers or shades for privacy and panels at the ends, gives the room its main fabric. Pillows on a sofa set in the bay, in a colour pulled from those panels, make the bay feel like the heart of the apartment.

The dim middle rooms

Rooms in the middle of a triple-decker floor, often bedrooms or a dining room, may have only a side window looking onto the next house a short way off. Pale fabrics with a gentle sheen help there, because they bounce light around instead of soaking it up. A soft cream or pale gold duvet cover can lift a dim bedroom noticeably, and lighter pillows do the same in a dining room.

The back kitchen and porch

The kitchen at the rear often has a door and a window onto the back porch, and it is usually the second sunny room on the floor. A café curtain or a light valance there, repeated in a pillow on a kitchen bench, gives the back of the apartment a bit of personality to match the front.

Making a long floor feel like one home

Because a triple-decker floor runs from front to back, rooms are often seen in a line through open doorways. Carrying one colour through each room, perhaps a blue that shows in the front room drapes, the bedroom duvet cover and the kitchen curtain, ties the floor together and makes it feel like one home rather than a series of separate rooms. It also makes later changes easier: a new pillow or a fresh duvet cover only has to fit one thread of colour, not every room at once. If you are planning the floor in stages, starting with the front room and working back is usually the simplest order, because the front bay sets the colour that the rest will follow.

Practical Notes

Bedding that copes with washing

A duvet cover is washed constantly, and many elegant drapery cloths are not designed for that. Where your preferred window fabric is delicate, a sturdier cloth in a matching colour can go on the bed while the drapery fabric is saved for a pair of shams or a single pillow.

Linen, velvet or something between

The two fabrics people ask about most for East Side rooms are linen and velvet, and they behave very differently. Linen is light, crisp and slightly informal; it creases, it softens with age, and it suits the airy Colonial Revival rooms with their white trim. Velvet is heavy, rich and catches the light in its pile; it suits Victorian parlours and libraries, and it makes a pillow feel substantial.

Many good rooms use both: linen at the tall windows, where its lightness keeps a long drop from feeling oppressive, and velvet on the pillows, where its depth adds warmth at seat level. Between the two sit cotton weaves, wool blends and textured cloths that can bridge the gap. We can lay all of them side by side so you can feel the difference.

Our upholstery work

We take on a limited amount of upholstery, and it is always tied to the fabric at the windows. What is possible varies from item to item, so we prefer not to promise particular furniture here. Tell us about yours, or bring in a photo, and we will give you an honest view.

Living with tall windows

Tall windows let in a lot of light, and pillows on furniture near them fade unevenly if left in one position. Turn them now and then, and swap pillows between sofas or chairs every season. Have covers cleaned the way the cloth allows; we explain how when you choose them.

Pairing the decor with the windows

Our custom drapes in Providence page covers long panels for tall sash and triple-decker bays. For every service we offer in the city, see window treatments for Providence homes, and for the full range of fabric work, the main custom fabric decor page.

Ready When You Are

To start on custom fabric decor in Providence, RI, press the call button and ask for a free quote. The same call can set up measuring in your home or answer questions about installation for the drapes and shades that go with your new pieces. The form is there if you would rather write, and we will reply. If you want to see the cloths first, the contact page has directions to the showroom. Google reviewers rate Window Works 5.0.