Over the past 10 months of living in this house, we’ve added window covers to each room. Except the kitchen. Which is a little dumb of me because the neighbors are SO close to us! At night we really need the privacy, so I grabbed some roller shades on Amazon.
These are my favorite because they’re affordable, they work GREAT, and they basically disappear when they’re up. I installed some in my office a few months ago and have loved them. We have beautiful molding in the kitchen so I want that to be the show. And the room is SO dark, we need every bit of light that’s possible.
But I didn’t want a boring shade in here since I don’t have any blinds. I wanted to add a bit of embellishment to jazz them up. Here’s how to dress up roller shades.
how to dress up roller shades
Let’s start with the video tutorial so you get an overview on what I did. Then, I’ll dive in with more details below:
If the video doesn’t work here, you can watch it on YouTube here. P.s. I’m trying to build that page up, so if you’d subscribe, I’d really appreciate that!SUPPLIES
- Roller Shades
- Heat and Bond
- 2-1/4″ wide Light Pink Ribbon (I changed my mind and didn’t use the gray that’s pictured)
- Iron
- Scissors
- Measuring Tape
- Level (or straight edge)
step 1
Start by pulling the roller shade out- you’ll want to pull it down as far as it’ll show when it’s in the window. Next, use a pencil and a straight edge to mark a 2″ border along the 3 outside edges. I used 2 1/4″ thick ribbon so I marked another line the same width as the ribbon so I can bond the ribbon to the shade in two places.
step 2
Next, I cut my ribbon and heat n bond to size. It was easy to hold them against the lines I’d made and trim them where they needed to end on the shade.
I have two raw edges showing on the shade so I used a small strip of heat n bond to “hem” each piece. To use the heat n bond, just cut a strip of it to size. Next, iron the piece down. Remove the paper and put the item where you want it adhered. Iron again to bond the two pieces. The package has instructions too, so you can reference those as well if you do this project.
step 3
And now, it’s time to iron the ribbon onto the shade by using the heat n bond. I’ll be honest, I was worried about ironing directly on the shade. I really didn’t want to ruin it! It worked out! The shade got a little rippled while ironing, but it straightened right out when hung.
I started with attaching the bottom piece which had two raw edges and then layered on the two side pieces with the hemmed edge. That looked really nice and finished so I’d suggest that! The top of the side pieces are raw, but they are so high in the shade, they’ll never be exposed (which was my plan).
after
Once it was complete, I hung it in the kitchen window. I am really happy with how it turned out! I like the little pop of pink- it’s so sweet! The beauty of this project is that you can add any color you want! There are so many fun ribbons out there, you can really customize this project that way!
The fun thing about roller shades is that the texture lends themselves to being painted too. You could always paint on a pattern or border! Or you can cover the whole thing in fabric if you want to add some fun pattern!
Another worry I had about this project is that I’d add too much bulk with the ribbon that it wouldn’t roll up. Thankfully, that turned out to not be the case! Plus do you see how much it disappears?! The window goes so high up, it’s barely noticeable in the day unless I keep it lowered a bit like I show in these pictures. At night it looks great too though!
I ended up going with the pink ribbon because I like how it pulls the pink from the chairs, toaster, and flowers in a subtle way. I know most people would go more neutral, but I figured I might as well have fun with it!
Do you have a roller shade? Is this a type of window covering you’d try out?
If you want to see a roll up of my favorite roller shades, go here. There’s some pretty good decorative options if you don’t want to dress up your own 💗.
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