Make Your Curtains Look Better- Easy and Permanent Fix

If you are anything like me and always walk around arranging your curtains into more pleasant looking pleats, this Instructable is for you. Keep in mind, this will only work with eyelet curtains.

Eyelet curtains move around easily and once they are opened, they just never look full, you end up with this sad looking, thin bits of fabric framing your windows. You can always arrange them to your liking to make them look fuller, but that takes time and effort to make them symmetrical. In the end all that effort will go to waste anyway if you so much as touch them or open the window.

I'm going to show you a very simple and low cost way to make your curtains look better and fuller permanently using DIY curtain spacers.

You will need a long tube or a bunch of short tubes. You can use empty toilet roll or paper towel tube, you can use plastic or acrylic tubes, you can even make them yourself with a bit of cardboard and some tape.

My favourite option is foam pipe cover. There are other, similar products out there that go by different names: trampoline/pole foam cover, pipe insulation, scaffolding sleeve etc. This is the exact product I used - PIPE.

It's easy to get, cheap and very easy to cut. It's also uniform in colour and light (so it won't weight the curtain rod unnecessarily) and looks more professional than the toilet roll tube.

Curtain spacers won't be visible when the curtain is drawn away, but when the curtain is opened up and covering the whole window, you might get a peak of the tube if you look closely.

NO SPACERS ----- SPACERS

You need to measure a few things before buying/making the pipes.

1) Measure/check the diameter of the curtain rod. The INSIDE DIAMETER of the foam pipe/spacer can be any size, as long as it's big enough to fit the curtain rod.

2) Measure the diameter of the curtain eyelet to determine the OUTSIDE DIAMETER of the pipe/spacer. The spacer's OUTSIDE DIAMETER has to be bigger than the eyelet.

It's very easy to cut the foam spacers to your desired length with a craft knife. If your foam pipe/spacer doesn't have a slit lengthwise, you have to cut it as well. The slits will allow you to slide the spacers onto the curtain rod without having to take the curtains down.

How many spacers do I need?

There is no universal answer, all curtains are different. Some have more eyelets per meter, some less. You just have to count the eyelets once your curtains are hanged and arranged.

How how long should the spacers be?

It depends on your curtains and your personal preference. Shorter spacers create smaller folds, longer spacers create bigger folds. See pictures below to see the difference. If you are not sure which one you prefer, you can always start with long spacers, and if you don't like them, just take them down and shorten them.