Curtains for sliding doors.

Start with which way the door opens.

A sliding or stacker door has a fixed panel and one or more sliding panels, and the sliders always collect at one end. That end is where you walk through. Any curtain that stacks there is going to be shoved out of the way by hand every single day until somebody gets sick of it. So the first thing we establish on a door is which end the panels stack to, and then we stack the curtain to the opposite end.

That usually means a one-way draw: the whole curtain runs from one end of the track to the other and gathers entirely on one side, rather than splitting in the middle. It is a specification decision on the track and the make-up, not something that can be changed afterwards, which is why it has to be settled at the measure.

Stack-back is the number that matters.

Stack-back is how much width the curtain occupies when it is fully open. On a normal window it costs you a bit of light. On a door it can cost you the doorway. Allow roughly 20 to 25 percent of the track length for an S-fold stack and 15 to 20 percent for pinch pleat.

Worked through: a 4 metre stacker with the track extended to 4.6 metres so the curtain clears the glass needs about 900mm to 1.15 metres of wall at the stacking end for S-fold. If the wall between the door and the corner is only 500mm, the curtain has no choice but to sit over the glass when it is open. The honest options at that point are to accept a partly covered panel, split the curtain into a centre draw so each side stacks half as much, or drop to a lower-fullness heading. There is more on how heading choice drives stack width in S-fold versus pinch pleat.

Clearance at the floor, always.

On a door we specify 10mm to 15mm clearance to the finished floor and we do not recommend puddling. A hem sitting on the floor at a doorway gets trodden on, kicked, dragged across the door track and caught in the slider mechanism daily. It soils fast, it wears at the leading corner, and in a house with a dog or small children it is a permanent nuisance. Clearance also lets air move behind the fabric, which matters in the tightly sealed new builds around Officer where condensation collects on the glass overnight.

For the same reason we usually recommend a wand on a door curtain rather than hand drawing. The leading edge of a door curtain is handled far more often than any other curtain in the house, and a wand keeps hands off the fabric.

Sheers over glass doors.

A wide railroaded sheer over a stacker is the most common thing we install in the estates, and for good reason. The fabric is woven wide, often 280cm to 300cm, so it runs horizontally across a 4 metre span with no seams catching the light. It takes the hard edge off the northerly and westerly glare that makes an open plan living area unusable on a 35 degree afternoon, and it gives daytime privacy from a neighbour whose alfresco is a few metres away.

The catch is night privacy. A sheer works because it is brighter outside than in, so after dark with the lights on, the sheer hides nothing. On a door that faces a neighbour or a shared reserve, plan for a second blockout layer on a double track from the start. That is set out in detail in sheers versus blockout.

Hardware for a long span.

A four metre curtain is heavy, especially with a lining, and it gets operated constantly. That is a heavy-duty track job with brackets at closer centres, not a light domestic extrusion, and on an S-fold it has to be a wave-compatible track as well. Budget $220 to $600 for hardware on a span like this. Motorisation is worth considering here more than anywhere else in the house, at $700 to $1,800 per window, because this is the curtain your family opens and closes several times a day. It is much cheaper to run the power during the build than to retrofit it later, so raise it early. The trade-offs are covered in tracks versus rods.

Corner and wraparound glazing.

Some estate plans run a stacker into a corner window with no wall between them. The right answer is a single track bent around the corner so the curtain runs continuously, rather than two separate tracks that leave a gap at the junction where light and cold air pour through. It also means the whole run stacks to one end, so the wall you need at that end is larger again. Bent hardware for a corner run sits at the upper end of the $220 to $600 band.

What a door curtain costs.

A 3.6 to 4 metre stacker in S-fold sheers with a heavy-duty track typically lands between $1,050 and $1,250 supplied and installed. Adding a second track with blockout behind it for night privacy and winter warmth adds roughly $700 to $950. Motorising either layer is the $700 to $1,800 line. Full pricing logic, including why the track length rather than the door width drives the number, is in the cost guide, and the numbers we check on site are listed in the measuring guide.

Frequently asked questions.