Curtains for Koo Wee Rup homes.

Koo Wee Rup sits on the drained swamp flats south of the highway, and the thing that defines it for our purposes is exposure. There is no hill, no ridge and very little established canopy to break the wind coming across the paddocks. Add a housing stock that is mostly older weatherboard and brick veneer with original single glazed aluminium or timber windows, and you have homes that are genuinely hard to keep warm from May through September. This is the suburb where thermal lining earns its money.

What actually happens at a cold window.

Room air touching cold single glazing loses its heat, gets denser, and falls down the face of the glass and out along the floor. Warm air from the room is pulled across to take its place, cools, and falls in turn. That convection loop runs all night and it is why a room can feel draughty even with every window and door shut tight. Blocking it needs three things: a curtain that reaches the floor, a lining with enough substance to slow heat transfer, and a closed top and sides so the loop cannot simply run over or around the curtain. A pelmet does that job, and where a pelmet is not wanted a track with a proper return bent back to the wall achieves most of it.

Which lining to choose here.

Unlined is not worth doing in Koo Wee Rup outside a sheer. Standard lining is the baseline and improves drape as well as warmth. Thermal or coated lining adds a genuine insulating layer and is what we recommend for the main living room and bedrooms. Interlining, a soft bump layer sandwiched between face fabric and lining, is the best of the lot and gives the curtain real weight and body. It is also the most expensive, so most Koo Wee Rup households put interlining in the lounge and thermal lining everywhere else. The trade-offs are set out in the fabric and lining guide.

Older windows are rarely square.

A lot of the housing here is 40 to 70 years old, and frames move. We regularly find reveals where the drop on the left is 20mm different to the drop on the right, sills that slope, and architraves that have been packed at some point in their life. That is exactly why we measure on site rather than working from numbers over the phone. It also affects the fix: where a reveal is too shabby or too shallow to take a track cleanly, a face-fixed track above the architrave with a generous overlap each side both looks better and performs better. Our measuring guide explains what we check and why DIY numbers so often come back short.

The new subdivision is a different job.

Koo Wee Rup also has newer housing going in on the edge of town, and those homes have the opposite problem: they are sealed tight, well insulated, and get bright rather than cold. There we do what we do in the estates, sheers through the living areas for daytime privacy and glare, blockout in the bedrooms, and we keep a floor clearance rather than puddling so the sealed rooms can still breathe. If you are in a new build, the Officer page covers that housing type in more detail.

What to expect on price.

Windows in older Koo Wee Rup homes are typically smaller than in the estate builds, which keeps costs at the friendlier end of the range. A lined blockout pinch pleat curtain runs $350 to $900 per window supplied and installed, triple weave blockout $300 to $750, and standard tracks $90 to $220. Most households here start with the living room and the bedrooms and add the rest later, which is a sensible way to do it. For a full breakdown of how curtains are priced, see the cost guide, and if you already own curtains that could simply be lined or re-hemmed, read alterations first.

Booking a measure.

We come to you, measure every window, talk through lining honestly rather than upselling every room to the top spec, and leave a written itemised quote. Make-up takes 3 to 5 weeks. Call (03) 9962 4152 or book the free measure online.

Koo Wee Rup questions we get asked.