In the words of the talented Duarto Feliz, “The windows are the eyes of our room. The valance is our eyebrows. The drapes are the… eyelashes.” Which is to say, a room can look off without some decoration on the windows—or, just entirely not function to the best of its abilities.

I got my most acute lesson on this front during a recent home renovation that had us turning a former junk room into an actual bedroom. We covered my quest to find a suitable rug previously, but once that was settled, I turned to the drapes. Since two of the room’s four walls were windows, totaling five in all, I knew I’d need some heavy duty curtains and hardware to properly protect the room’s guests from prying eyes, and restless sleep. But the windows were hardly standard size—installed by the previous owner, our contractor kindly indicated that he thought that they may have fallen off the back of a truck—and as anyone looking into this sector knows, custom drapery can be very expensive. If your windows don’t fit in the standard sizes and styles, options are limited. I, frankly, wasn’t even sure where to start when it came to figuring out what to do with mine—ordering individual hardware and drapes for each window seemed like it would be messy and annoying to deal with, both during installation and while using them after.

But as usual, our intrepid Senior Home Guides Editor Megan stepped in and suggested I look into Everhem. Founded in 2018 by Los Angeles interior designer Haley Weidenbaum and her husband, Adam, the direct-to-consumer brand makes custom window treatments—drapes and shades—for people who have particular situations like myself, or just want to skip shopping at a big box store. Weidenbaum, who became quite popular on Homepolish as an option for people who want to use an interior decorator but can’t afford some of the costs there, has said repeatedly that they were moved to start the company because in her line of work she had found that window treatments had become a “consistent pain point.” While not yet a household name, you may have come across them because of some recent partnerships they’ve done with various influencers and actors. So I reached out to the Everhem team about doing a test, and we were off.

Making My Drapes the Eyelashes of My Room

The first step of the Everhem experience is deciding which kind of window treatment you want. They offer full sized drapes as well as cafe curtains; Roman shades; and woven wood shades. While we have shades upstairs at our house, because this room was so window-dominant, I wanted the experience of opening and closing them to be easy and provide ambiance in and of itself, so drapes seemed like the way to go. While you can order what you think you want right away on their website, since this was such a specific project, I set up a complimentary call with a company consultant, who went over the space of the room and my desires and needs. I also had them send over swatches of the fabrics I was interested in to get a better sense of what the colors and textures would look like in real life. Everhem’s offerings are, like many in the DTC space, on the neutral side—so if you’re looking for big statement colors in your window treatments, this is probably not the place for you. (I originally had envisioned the curtains being the dominant color in the room, and thought I’d go with something super bright, but quickly realized that would take it over entirely.)

During my video consultation, we went over the room—I had sent over photos beforehand, and we looked at the space together as well—and discussed my vision, which was a wraparound curtain look on the two windowed walls, creating the illusion of one big stretch of fabric and rod when pulled closed. I decided to go with Sage, a light green, in the blackout curtain option for maximal privacy, which we decided might echo the trees outside nicely. Initially, I had been concerned about the blackout being too blackout—we all know the feel (and smell!) some of those can have—but the cotton and linen swatches persuaded me. You also choose a style of pleat—I went with tailored—and whether you want sheers behind the curtains—I passed, as there would already be enough fabric involved here. Then you choose hardware—I went with a curved, matte black 1 inch rod. Cost wise, this project would likely have come to a few thousand dollars had I paid for it—not cheap, but not more expensive than it would have been had I done it elsewhere, and definitely less complex.

Once we got off the call, my consultant sent over a detailed email with all of the information of the measurements, fabrics, etc. that we’d agreed on, and a note that they would be shipped in six to eight weeks.

Installing Said Eyelashes

The drapes and hardware came in two separate, long boxes, exactly six weeks from ordering. The hardware arrived first, and then the drapes, and, like was the case with my rug, just in time for guests to be using the space—we were literally installing them the night before. I would, maybe obviously, not suggest putting these up towards the end of the day when you’re tired—that’s not really setting yourself up to success. But you’re smarter and less time crunched than I am! Rarely does one have a curtain emergency like this, but we persevere. Though the company provides several written and video tutorials available online, for my situation, I found some of the instructions not really applicable or a little light on direction—there was, for example, nothing that I could find on installing the corner bracket—which wasn’t entirely necessary, since it’s fairly self explanatory, but caused me a little anxiety that we might mess it up., and the instructions sent along were fairly minimal—and the labeling on the packaging was a bit slight. Though I have no doubt that had I reached out to the company they would have helped with clarification, I was intent on getting the full DIY experience—and getting it done quickly. The majority of consumers, who I imagine are using Everhem for more straightforward window treatments, won’t have the issues I did.

Particularly because, you don’t actually need to do this yourself—the company suggests you hire a Taskrabbit if you’re more comfortable with the assistance. While I’d love to say that I bravely tackled this project alone, it’s definitely a two-person job, and I was thankful to have my partner there to troubleshoot. A former art handler, he had some quibbles, namely that a drill bit wasn’t provided, though a very specific one was called for, and that the screws offered weren’t really working for our walls. We hit a bit of trouble when we realized that one of the walls wasn’t level, and so instead of hanging it to look level, it is level, and just doesn’t look it. Sigh. We also had some issues fitting where the rods connected into the bracket that supports them in the center of the wall; they had to be really jammed in there. But these were likely unavoidable regardless of what company we went with; doing it yourself and not hiring an expert means some trial and error. My one main tip is to count and check several times before putting the curtain rings on the rod—depending on which product you’re going with, if you make a mistake, you have to uninstall the rod in order to fix them. Yes, even though Everhem points this out in their instructions, I accidentally put the curtain rings on backwards even after checking several times. Yes, I wanted to scream at myself.

But despite my nervousness that my measurements would be off, everything fit perfectly, and given the complexity of the project, I was kind of amazed nothing more required tweaking. Once it was all up, you’d never notice any of those little details (unless you’re really fixated on our crooked wall, which was crooked to begin with). I was kind of astonished at how professional they looked, having never put up real window treatments myself. Plus, my mother-in-law—the room’s second guest—raved about them.

Top image courtesy of Everhem

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