New Construction Window Treatments in Danville: Timing

Danville Window Treatments

A new Danville home comes with a builder allowance for window coverings and a long list of decisions the allowance doesn't cover. When to measure, how to mount around a drywall return, when to phase the job, and what to do about a two story wall of glass all matter more than which fabric you pick first.

What a builder allowance actually buys

What comes with a new house is a stock product, cut down at the design center to fit the plan's window sizes. It isn't a bad product, it's just not a finished answer. The color and opacity list is short, usually one white and one light filtering fabric for the whole house, and the package addresses none of the specific problems a room can have.

Stock coverings run roughly $60 to $600 a window nationally. Custom coverings, measured in the home and installed, run roughly $250 to $2,600. A Danville builder allowance is sized against the first range, and knowing that gap exists before move-in day saves a lot of frustration at the design center.

Measure the house that got built, not the plan

Treat a plan dimension as a starting guess, not a number to order from. Drywall thickness, corner bead, trim reveal, and paint each take a bite out of a framed opening, paint being one more layer once everything else is already dry. A thirty six inch opening on the drawing can finish a half inch off in either direction, and rarely finishes the same width top and bottom.

Wait until the walls are drywalled and trimmed, and the paint is actually dry, before measuring. Better still, wait until the punch list closes too, since a Danville builder will reset trim and shim sills during that final pass. Drapery has its own rule: it gets measured after finished flooring goes in, because the floor sets the hem. Hard coverings skip that step, since they hang from the top of the opening.

Phase the house instead of doing it all at once

A new house doesn't need every window covered on day one. What it needs immediately is privacy at eye level, bedrooms, bathrooms, a home office with a screen in the window, anything the street or a neighbor looks straight into. Inexpensive temporary paper shades handle the rest for a few months and come down without leaving marks.

After that, cover the rooms you actually live in, ordered as whole rooms rather than window by window, since that keeps everything in one dye lot. Drapery and other decorative layers come last, partly because they look best chosen against furniture that's already in place, and partly because drapery has to be measured after the finished flooring goes in.

Keep records as you go. A white shade ordered in 2008 isn't guaranteed to match a white ordered two years later, and the difference shows up fast in afternoon light. Write down the product line, the fabric name, the color code, and the mount type on every order, and a later room in your Danville house has a real shot at matching.

The two story great room window wall

Break a great room window wall into separate questions instead of treating it as one giant decision. In a Danville house, does the upper glass even need covering? A north facing wall in a comfortable room might not. A west facing wall that cooks the room every afternoon has found its whole problem right there. Whatever gets covered, nothing at that height is hand operable, so motorization is the practical choice, not an upgrade.

Battery motors run roughly $100 to $300 a window less than hardwired units, and that savings gets spent again every time a battery wand needs service, commonly about once a year, on a wall you need a lift to reach. Running power while the walls are still open is usually worth the extra step.

Very tall shades also behave worse at the edges, and one major manufacturer notes larger light gaps on shades 120 inches and taller or with a height to width ratio near four to one. Splitting the wall into an upper band and a lower band, each operated on its own, usually looks and performs better than a single oversized shade. Solar fabric is the common choice for the view, and its openness factor, roughly one to ten percent, sets how much glare control you get versus how much view you keep.

A new build rewards patience more than speed. Wait for the punch list, order the privacy rooms first, and let the rest follow once you've lived in the house a while. Danville Window Treatments writes every scope and price down before ordering, as Indiana law requires on jobs over one hundred fifty dollars, so a new Danville homeowner always knows what they agreed to. We're insured and bonded. Call (317) 999-5154 when your trim is finished.

Trim style and mounting decide what's possible

Trim style is the detail that decides how a covering actually mounts, and new houses usually mix both types. Some windows get full wood casing with a sill and apron. Others get drywall returns, where the wall material wraps straight into the opening with no wood trim at all.

Inside mounts generally work fine on a drywall return, since there's often plenty of flat depth for a headrail. Outside mounts are the harder case, drywall alone won't hold a bracket under load, so it takes framing above the opening or a mounting board installed first. A drapery rod makes this worse, since a long rod loaded with fabric pulls hard on its anchor.

While a Danville house is still open, adding blocking behind the drywall where rod brackets will land costs almost nothing. Almost nobody asks for it, and almost everybody wishes they had once the drapery goes up against bare drywall.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will custom coverings be ready when we move in?

Only if you order early enough. Custom lead times commonly run two to five weeks from the order going in, and the order can't go in until somebody has measured finished openings. If your trim and paint wrap up two weeks before closing, the math doesn't work for the whole house. The usual plan is to measure as soon as the trim is finished, order the privacy rooms first, hang inexpensive temporary shades everywhere else, and let the rest arrive on its own schedule.

If I finish rooms later, will everything still match?

Only if you keep records. Fabrics and painted finishes are produced in batches, so a white ordered in 2008 won't necessarily match a white ordered a year and a half later, and the difference shows in afternoon light. Ask for the product line, the fabric name, the color code, and the mount type to be written on every order, and keep a copy. Also order any single room complete rather than one window at a time, since matching within a room matters far more than matching between floors.

Do we need to run electrical for motorized shades on the great room wall?

If the walls are still open, it's worth doing. Battery motors run roughly $100 to $300 a window less than hardwired ones, but battery wands commonly need service about once a year, and a wall that tall usually needs a lift just to reach them. Hardwiring while the framing is exposed avoids that recurring chore for good. If the walls are already closed, battery power is still a completely workable answer, just budget for the yearly maintenance.