Motorized Curtains and Electric Drapes - Facts

A motorized curtain may be mounted in two ways. It can be inside mount or ceiling mount or outside mount. Inside or ceiling necessitates the top of the motorized curtain be mounted onto something horizontal that could be a ceiling or a pocket or a door/window frame. The outside mount is simply mounted onto a wall with open space above the motorized curtain. The inside mount is more difficult of the two as there is no scope of any error. In this case accurate measurements are chiefly important to get a perfect fitting of the final product inside the opening. A perfect fit is a matter of taste and needs to be discussed carefully with the customer. Some like the fabric to exactly skim the floor, others prefer normal standard gap of ¼” between the floor and the lowest edge of the drape.



Inside and ceiling mount applications when used for non-square window openings could look uneven because the curtain is a perfect square but the opening may not be so. As a result, the normal 1/4" deduction from the lowest point could be an inch or more from the highest point. There is no practical way to solve this except to know before hand and manage expectations. Measuring the opening at many different points for height would make known any height discrepancies.

Now let’s have a look at the style of the motorized curtains. Motorized curtains or electric drapes are available in two major styles: Pinch pleat; which true to its name has pinches of fabric every few inches and Ripplefold, which is a technique of having the fabric without pleats but gently zig sagging to get an S-shape. Both are design considerations. The standard pinch pleat, (aka French pleat) is more popular. Pinch pleat has smaller stacks compared to Ripplefold.

Where will the shades open and close in is also called 'stacking'. First concern is on which side of the track the motor will be. This is decided by how the motorized curtains should open; left, right or center open. Customers are often surprised to learn that curtains when fully opened to let light in, usually do not clear the glass of the window on each side unless there is room on one or both sides of the opening. This is known as 'stacking off the glass'. The stack of the fabric is characteristically 25 - 33% of its width when the curtains are open. This means that if the window width is 12 feet, the drapery, if it is a center open, will stack about 4 ft total or 2 feet on either side. This can obstruct opening of sliding door and also the view.

Weight of the fabrics: Fabrics become very heavy is case of larger curtains, more so if a blackout lining is added. Weight of the fabric due window size, can make manual operation very cumbersome to the point of being impractical without dividing the opening into many smaller sections which will leave stacks in the middle of the glass. That’s the benefit of motorized draperies, as large spans can be covered by single draperies driven by one or two motors. Knowing before hand the fabric weight that is generally expressed in lbs. or oz. per yard length of the fabric, is imperative for an appropriate selection of motor. Understandably, weight is not much of an issue with light sheer fabrics.

Apart from the factors listed above there are others too. However, knowing before hand the intended mounting type, pleat style, opening side and estimated stacking and fabric weight are of great help in ensuring the success of any motorized curtain project.