Curtains & Blinds

Wave curtains, grommet panels and the blinds behind them:

fabric curtains split by how they hang. Grommet panels, with metal rings punched along the top, slide straight onto a rod in standard drops, the cheap and movable end of the market. Wave curtains hang from gliders in a ceiling or wall track and fall in even folds; they are made to the height of the room, and on an ordinary rod they bunch like any other curtain. Behind either there is often a blind: a roller in screen fabric for daytime privacy, a zebra roller with alternating sheer and solid bands, or vertical blinds across a sliding door to the garden.

Screen, zebra and blackout fabric for the afternoon sun:

which fabric suits a room depends on where the sun lands. A screen roller cuts glare and keeps the view, but at night with the lights on it turns see-through from outside, so a bedroom needs blackout or a second blind behind it. A zebra roller gives a middle position by sliding its bands out of line, though it never darkens a room fully. On a west-facing terrace in Tamarindo or Playas del Coco, a curtain inside the glass is the wrong tool: an exterior sun screen, rolled down outside the opening or across the corridor, stops the heat before it reaches the window. A bedroom closed off with blackout runs on lamps, so plan the lighting with it; a curtain that faded unevenly matters less when the cushions and rugs carry the colour.

Ready-made panels against workshop-made curtains and blinds:

a ready-made blackout panel with grommets costs around ₡7,000 new, so one used panel on its own saves next to nothing, while four in the same colour with their rod are a different matter. Ready-made exterior sun screens big enough for a terrace start around ₡60,000. A workshop-made screen, zebra or wave curtain costs several times a ready-made piece once the visit, the measuring and the installation are added. Used, a workshop set has shed the cost of the fitting but kept the fabric and the mechanism, and one cut for a standard condo window keeps its value for every unit built with the same window.

Holding a used curtain up to the light:

shows most of what is wrong with it. Sun rot appears first along the folds that faced the glass: faded stripes, cloth that tears when you pinch it and, on blackout, a backing cracked into pinholes of light. Coated blackout also flakes after a hot wash or a spin in the dryer. Check the hem and the lining for black mildew spots. Pull a zebra roller all the way down and see that the bands line up across the full width; frayed side edges mean it was mounted crooked and rubbed against a bracket. Vertical blinds fail at the top, where the plastic carriers snap, and at the bottom, where the chain linking the slats goes missing.

A condo set of blinds listed with the window it came from:

gives the next owner what they need to decide. Measure the fabric width and drop, the tube of a roller with its brackets, and for wave curtains the track length and the ceiling height they were made for. Say whether the track, rod or brackets go with it. Photograph each piece from the window side against daylight and copy the fabric type from the label. A roller that is too wide for someone else’s window can be cut down by a workshop, but none can be widened, so state the width exactly. If the set came from a condo tower in Santa Ana, Heredia or Curridabat, name the building or the unit type: a neighbour with the same windows is the likeliest buyer. Whoever comes to collect should bring their own window measurements, and the curtains should already be off the track and folded, with the gliders and screws in a bag.