There are places in your home that really benefit from being open to the outside world, without the restriction of a heavy curtain or blind. While you may want to enjoy an uninterrupted view out of that particular window, you still have the problem of the hot sun piercing its way into your room. It’s in these situations where sheer curtains really come into their own.

Usually you will put up a curtain for privacy, or for insulating your room against the heat or cold, but sometimes you just need to filter these elements out, rather than blocking them out completely. After all, what’s the use of having a window in your room if you can’t utilise it? If your window overlooks a paddock or a lake, or even a cityscape, then you are not going to want to hide that view away, especially if you are in the situation of not having to worry about neighbours or passers by sticking their noses in.

And that’s the one downside of having sheer window curtains; they afford you little or no privacy. There are ways around this limitation, which we will be discussing later, but ultimately sheer curtains should be used in places where you either don’t care about people looking through your window, or you are in an environment where there is no one around to look through. The benefits that a sheer curtain affords far outweigh this technicality. The translucent nature of these curtains soften those harmful sun rays so that you get a wonderful filtered light effect in your room. In the right situation, this can add a whole new character to your house.

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If you really like the style and elegance of a sheer curtain, but need just that little bit of privacy during the day, then you can look at gathering your curtains, giving them a fullness that will provide a higher level of intimacy. This is achieved by purchasing a covering that is larger in width than the actual width of your window. What you need to do is measure the width of your window frame and multiply that number by three. This is the width of the sheer material you need to buy in order to give you a fuller, more private, window covering. When hung on the window, this curtain will fall naturally in loops, which also gives the room a softer ambiance.

Another benefit that you may not have considered with sheer curtain panels is the fact that they are great for indoor plants. I have found it really difficult to keep my plants healthy. Either they are not getting enough sunlight and their growth is stunted, or they get too much sun and shrivel up and die. These plants require a delicate balance to survive. I like to think of what they need in their natural setting. Imagine a forest with the smaller plants on the forest floor. The light that these plants receive is neither too much nor too little, there is this dappled sunlight effect that naturally occurs in these environments, and that’s what we need to try and accomplish in our rooms that have these plants in them. Sheer curtains are the perfect way to achieve this, and your plants will love you for installing them and reward you with plenty of greenery in your home.

There are quite a few different materials that sheer curtains are made from. One of the most popular, but also most expensive, are silk sheers. These curtains provide a luxurious and elegant feel that cannot be reproduced by any other fabric. Who would have though that the humble caterpillar could create something of such magnificence? If your budget is too tight to allow for the luxury of silk, you can still buy semi sheer curtains that are made using cheaper materials such as cotton and polyester. The most common colour for sheers are lighter shades like white and creams, but people have used pastel shades to great effect in these curtains as well.