One of the most frequent e-mails I get asks me what kind of Roman shades I use to decorate my own home with…

There aren’t many blogs out there talking about Roman shades, so I find myself getting a lot of comments and e-mails asking me for personal advice about what kinds of Roman shade I use in my own home. I have a mid-sized home, so my recommendations may not work for all of you, but I’ll give this topic a whirl today anyway. Now, be warned that custom Roman shades design really takes an individual eye — for example, my house doesn’t really have any sort of Eastern motif to it, so I don’t use bamboo Roman shades at all, even though I think they’re a very valuable addition to a whole lot of potential styles. I tend to stick mostly with fabric Roman shades, although I did make some custom Roman shades with special gold thread that you can’t find in stores anywhere.

Let’s start with the main floor:

In the dining room I use normal, light fabric Roman shades

Fabric Roman shades in my dining room

My house is a modest sized one, and I tend to go for a general antique sort of design. You can see with the wooden chairs and the chandelier in this photo what kind of style I’m going for — I don’t want it to look like a house full of octogenarians, but I also don’t want it to look like a modern newlyweds abode. To fit the look I’m going for, I opted for some fabric Roman shades in the dining room. I picked a rather neutral color, but you can see that it matches the tablecloth quite well, and its light tone is accented by the hanging crystals on the chandelier. I could have also gone with a darker color to match the wood instead, but I opted for a more light touch — I didn’t want to drag down the mood in the room that sees the most socialization of all (I host a lot of dinner parties). So, for this case, a nice light fabric Roman shade worked very well.

In the kitchen, similar to the dining room, I went with green fabric Roman shades

As you can see, I went for a similar look in my kitchen. Heavier wood Roman shades wouldn’t be as appropriate here either, because I don’t have any wood cabinets flanking my main kitchen window. Because of the marble counter top and the white paint we decided to use in the kitchen, anything with a wood tone in the Roman shades would clash hard with the rest of the room. Therefore, we went with fabric Roman shades again. The green color on these Roman shades matches the paint of the wall perfectly, and the specks and lines of whiter color throughout help them match very well to the white paint below. All in all, these green fabric Roman shades tie my kitchen together in a way that normal mini blinds can’t.

Finally, in the bedroom, I have more translucent yellow fabric Roman shades

I want you to notice one big, important thing about these fabric Roman shades. What is it? They’re TRANSLUCENT. They let the light in. This is very important for me, because I love to wake up naturally in the mornings. I don’t rely on an alarm clock — I need natural sunlight. These Roman shades are made to let the light through, and that’s why I chose to use them in the bedroom. They’re a natural yellow color, and the fabric on these fabric Roman shades is clear enough to let a nice natural glow from the sun in the morning. I wouldn’t decorate my room with any other type of Roman shades, especially not one that blocks out the sun — but these do the trick perfectly.

Now that you’ve seen how I use Roman shades, particularly fabric Roman shades, in my house, maybe you’ll have some ideas for how to use them yourself. Remember that the important thing is to MATCH them to what’s around them in the room — you need your Roman shades to match their surroundings, or else they’ll clash with everything. The number 2 consideration is to make sure that they allow as much or as little light as you need. After that, it’s all style — whether you need fabric Roman shades, bamboo Roman shades, wood Roman shades, or custom Roman shades, you have to make a choice about what YOU think will look best in YOUR home!