Curtains for Officer homes.

Almost every Officer job starts the same way. The keys were handed over, the builder's contract covered flooring and a splashback, and every window in the house is bare. Modern estate plans in Arcadia, Timbertop and Kaduna Park put enormous windows in the living zone and a three or four panel stacker door onto a courtyard that is only a few metres from the fence. Until something goes up, the family lives with full visibility from the street and a living room that is unusable from about two in the afternoon.

North and west glare is the first thing to solve.

Officer blocks are tight and the orientation is whatever the estate layout gave you, so plenty of homes cop direct northerly and westerly sun straight into the open plan living area. On a 35 degree Cardinia summer afternoon that glass is radiating heat into the room long after you have shut the door. A textured sheer across the whole span takes the hard edge off the light, cuts the glare on the television, and slows the radiant heat without turning the room into a cave. It is the single most requested product we hang in this suburb.

Sheers on an S-fold track, because the windows are wide.

A four metre stacker door needs a heading that stacks tidily and draws smoothly across a long run. That is exactly what S-fold was designed for. The fabric runs in a continuous wave on a compatible track at around 2.2 to 2.5 times fullness, the stack sits neatly to one side, and there are no pleat hooks to catch. Expect roughly $280 to $700 per window for S-fold sheers supplied and installed, with the wide door openings sitting at the top of that band. Read our guide to curtains for sliding and stacker doors before you decide which way the curtain should draw.

Blockout only where you actually need it.

We rarely put blockout through an entire Officer house. The bedrooms get it, because a west-facing kids room in an estate with no established trees is bright at 6am in January. A lined blockout pinch pleat curtain runs about $350 to $900 per window, and a triple weave blockout, which gets its light stopping from the weave rather than a coating, sits around $300 to $750. The living areas usually stay in sheer, or move to a double track with sheer in front and blockout behind if you want both options on one window. Our sheer versus blockout comparison walks through the trade-off room by room.

Condensation is a genuine Officer issue.

New estate homes are built tight. That is good for your energy bill and awkward for moisture, because the water your family produces has nowhere to go and condenses on the coldest surface in the room, which is the glass. If you then hang a heavily coated blockout curtain hard against that glass and puddle it on the floor, you have created a sealed pocket that stays wet all winter. In the rooms where this shows up we mount the track a little further off the wall, keep a 10mm to 15mm floor clearance rather than puddling, and choose a standard or thermal lining over a fully coated one so the air behind the curtain can move.

What Officer homes typically spend.

A three or four bedroom Officer home done properly, sheers across the living and dining, blockout in the bedrooms, quality tracks throughout, generally comes in between $4,500 and $11,000 including GST, supplied and installed. Tracks add $90 to $220 for a standard run and $220 to $600 where the span is long or needs a heavy-duty or bay-bent extrusion. Motorisation, which is worth considering on high level windows above a stairwell or on a stacker you open constantly, runs $700 to $1,800 per window. Full detail is in the Pakenham curtain cost guide.

How the free measure works.

We come to you in Officer, bring the fabric books and heading samples, and go room by room. We measure track length rather than glass width, because that is what your curtain is actually priced on, and we check the ceiling line, the cornice, the floor covering and where the stack has room to sit. You get a written quote with each window itemised. Make-up runs 3 to 5 weeks from approval, then we come back and install. Nothing is charged for the visit and there is no obligation. Call (03) 9962 4152 or book the measure online.

Officer questions we get asked.