Elegant tabbed curtains

After years of having to contend with conventional curtain tracks or those that use a rail system, we were quite adamant about going for something else for our new home. Not to say that such curtain tracks or rails are bad, but the sheer tedium of having to put in all the hooks can get maddening after a while. This is especially so if you're dealing with a heavily curtained home, filled to the brim with rail curtains to thread every time you do the seasonal cleaning or the in-laws come to visit. We eventually settled on tabbed curtains, mainly because the ease of use an elegance of such a system is awesome.

Thankfully, these days you don't have to make your own tabbed curtains to get the good kind as IKEA and other furniture hypermarts have made it all that much easier and affordable to get your hands on quality design stuff without breaking the bank. The system is simple because all you need to do to hang up a tabbed curtain is to run a curtain pole through the tabs on the curtain and then just hang up the curtain pole. It sure beats having to thread the hooks of a curtain rail system individually and manually. With this sort of ease of install, its made washing such curtains a more regular event for us mainly because the install process is fast and easy to do.

Unfortunately there are some problems associated with tabbed curtains. While these issues are not major they can be niggling, especially for someone who's been using the more conventional curtain track or rail system almost all their life. Tabbed curtains can be a damn nuisance to move. While a track or rail system is usually smooth when closing or opening the curtains, tabbed curtains aren't as precise nor as smooth. The other major thing is that you have to pay some more consideration to the actual support system, which is the curtain pole.

You can choose from any number of curtain poles these days, including plastic, metal and wood. We went for a metal one, mainly because it was extendable so we didn't have to care about getting the measurements wrong. Regardless of what curtain pole you're using, all curtain poles tend to have a bit more give compared to a regular rail system, in that they can bend or flex if the curtain is heavy enough. Always make sure that there are enough pole supports in the middle unless of course you don't mind that your curtains are all hanging from the center. This can be even worse for someone who is using an extendable curtain pole, mainly because when the pole is bent down the middle you can't adjust it as well as before. Apart from those two issues tabbed curtains are definitely a lot easier to maintain and should be on the consideration list if you're already half-mad from threading the hooks of your parents rail curtains.