Linings and Finishes

How to Choose Your Linings

Lining protects your face fabric from sun damage, improves the drape, helps to reduce the light filtering through and can provide an element of thermal insulation.  

  • Lining protects your face fabric from sun damage, improves the drape, helps to reduce the light filtering through and can provide an element of thermal insulation.  

  • A specialised lining coated to completely block external light while providing excellent draft exclusion. Useful where light control and warmth are a priority. 

  • A thick, blanket-like soft felt layer sandwiched invisibly between your main fabric and the standard lining. It adds incredible body, creates a heavy, opulent drape, and offers the highest level of thermal insulation.  

Hand-Finished or Machine-Finished?

When investing in bespoke soft furnishings, the way your curtains are constructed makes a world of difference to how they hang, how long they last, and how luxurious they feel in your home. 

  • These are the luxury standard. The face fabric, lining and interlining are all sewn together using completely hidden hand-stitching, requiring skilled craftsmanship. There is no machine stitching or needles potentially distorting the cloth, and the fabric remains completely relaxed, allowing the curtains to drape in soft fluid columns. For high end fabrics like silks, velvets and heavy linens, hand finishing is always preferable to produce a flawless top quality finish worthy of the premium fabric and will work in traditional or more formal settings. 

  • These are the contemporary standard. While still custom-made to your exact dimensions, the long vertical side hems and bottom headings are machine sewn with clean, perfectly straight, secure lines using thread matched to the fabric colour as closely as possible. A fine line of machine stitching will be subtly visible on the reverse lining and may be visible on the front face fabric on close inspection, depending on the textile texture. If using a heading tape, this will be secured across the top with machine stitching, which may also be visible on close inspection. Using clean, crisp, contemporary fabrics, this curtain finish works well in modern spaces or everyday rooms, or where there are tight project timelines or budgets. 

Curtains can also be finished with a combination of hand and machine stitching. For example, the side hems and header may be machine stitched, while the hem is hand finished. Or a hand finished heading may be chosen, but the side seams and hem are machine stitched. I am happy to talk you through all these options.