Curtains for Garfield homes.

Garfield is small and its housing is genuinely varied: period cottages with high skirtings and moulded architraves, solid post-war and mid-century brick, a handful of newer builds, and rural properties spreading out toward Tynong and Nar Nar Goon. What almost all of it shares is windows that were designed at a different scale to anything being built today. Narrower openings, lower heads, deeper sills, and detail around the frame that a badly chosen curtain will bury.

Get the heading right before you look at fabric.

In a character home the heading does more for the finished look than the colour does. Double pinch pleat is the safe and correct choice for most Garfield rooms, with triple pleat for a formal front room where you want a fuller, more structured column of fabric. Both sit comfortably against period detailing. Eyelet and tab top read as casual and contemporary and usually look imported into an older house. S-fold is beautiful, but it needs a compatible track and a generous stack width, and a lot of Garfield windows simply do not have the wall either side to give it. The full comparison is in S-fold versus pinch pleat.

Small bays, measured on site.

There are more bay windows in Garfield than the size of the township would suggest, mostly modest front bays on period and mid-century houses. They are all slightly different and none of them can be quoted from a photo. We measure the actual angles and either bend a heavy-duty track to match or use a bay rod with elbow joints, budgeting $220 to $600 for the hardware depending on span and the number of bends. Pinch pleat turns the corner of a bay much more cleanly than a wave heading, which is another reason it dominates in this suburb.

Short windows, and where the curtain should stop.

The most common mistake we undo in Garfield is a curtain that stops right at the sill on a short window. It emphasises how low the window is and it leaves an open path for cold air to spill out underneath. Going to the floor, with the track mounted above the architrave rather than inside the reveal, lifts the apparent ceiling height and closes that path off. Sill length is genuinely right only where a bench, a heater or built-in furniture sits directly under the window, and even then it should finish about 15cm below the sill rather than exactly at it. There is more on drop decisions in the measuring guide.

Fabric that suits an older room.

Older Garfield rooms tend to be smaller and darker than a modern open plan living space, so a heavy dark curtain can close a room down. Textured mid-weight fabrics in warm neutrals do the most work: they read as substantial against the joinery without swallowing the light. Where a room is dark but you still want warmth at night, a sheer on the front track and a lined blockout behind it gives you a bright day and a closed-up evening on one window. Fabric families, fade resistance and pattern repeat are covered in the fabric guide, and the two-layer approach is explained in sheers versus blockout.

What Garfield jobs cost.

Smaller windows keep the numbers sensible. Lined blockout pinch pleat runs $350 to $900 per window supplied and installed, triple weave blockout $300 to $750, sheers $280 to $700, standard tracks $90 to $220 and rods with finials $120 to $450. If you have inherited curtains with the house that are the right character but the wrong length, re-hemming at $80 to $180 per curtain or re-heading at $120 to $300 is often the smartest money you will spend, and we will tell you honestly when that is the better call. See alterations and the cost guide.

Booking a measure.

Garfield is on our standard Cardinia run with Bunyip, Tynong and Nar Nar Goon. No travel charge, no obligation, a written quote itemised per window, and 3 to 5 weeks for make-up. Call (03) 9962 4152 or request your measure online.

Garfield questions we get asked.