Phasing Window Treatments Room by Room in New Cicero Homes

Cicero Window Treatments

New construction changes the rules for window coverings in ways a lot of people don't find out until they're already living with the results. Trim style decides how things mount. Plan dimensions aren't the numbers you order from. Here's a practical look at getting it right the first time in a new Cicero build.

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 Cicero 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.

Trim style and mounting decide what's possible

Two different trim conditions show up in the same new house, and they change everything about mounting. Full wood casing gives you a sill and an apron to work with. Drywall returns give you nothing but drywall wrapping into the opening, no wood at all.

A drywall return opening usually has enough flat depth for an inside mount. An outside mount is the harder call, since drywall by itself won't hold a bracket under real load, meaning the framing above the opening has to be hit or a mounting board goes in first. Drapery hardware carries the same issue with more weight riding on it.

The cheapest time to solve this in a Cicero build is before the drywall goes up, adding blocking wherever a drapery rod is likely to land. It takes a builder a few minutes during framing and it's a real project to add after the fact.

Measure the house that got built, not the plan

A number pulled off the blueprint is a guess with a decimal point on it. The finished opening in a Cicero house depends on drywall thickness, corner bead at the edges, how the carpenter set the trim reveal, and a coat of paint that's trivial alone and not trivial stacked with everything else. Thirty six inches on paper can finish a half inch off in either direction, and it's rarely the same width top to bottom.

Measure once the walls are drywalled and trimmed, and once the paint is dry, ideally after the punch list closes too, since builders reset casing and shim sills during that final pass. Drapery breaks this rule: it waits for finished flooring, because the floor height sets the hem. Blinds and shades don't have that problem, 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 Cicero house has a real shot at matching.

The two story great room window wall

Take the great room wall in a Cicero house apart into pieces instead of pricing it as one line item. First, does the upper glass need covering at all. A comfortable, north facing room might not need it. A west facing room that's unusable by mid-afternoon has its entire problem sitting in that upper band. Second, operation, since nothing eighteen feet up moves by hand, motorization is simply how it gets run.

Battery motors cost roughly $100 to $300 a window less than hardwired ones, which is tempting until you remember a battery wand commonly needs fresh batteries about once a year, and this particular wall needs a lift to reach. If the walls are still open, running power now avoids that chore for good.

One giant shade also tends to underperform two smaller ones. Very tall shades give up more at the edges, and one major manufacturer notes bigger light gaps on shades 120 inches and taller or near a four to one height to width ratio. An upper band and a lower band, run independently, usually behave better. Solar fabric handles most view walls well, and openness factor, roughly one to ten percent, is the spec that trades glare control against how much view survives.

A tricky great room wall or a builder allowance that doesn't stretch far enough doesn't have to be guesswork. Cicero Window Treatments has measured and phased new construction across Cicero long enough to know where the surprises hide. We're insured and bonded, and we put the scope and price in writing before anything gets ordered. Call (317) 863-9966 to talk through your new build.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do we do about the two story great room windows?

Break it into separate questions. Do the upper units need covering at all? If they face north and the room is comfortable, leaving them bare is a legitimate answer. If they face west, they're usually the whole problem. Operation comes next, since nothing at that height is hand operable, so motorization is practical rather than a luxury. Hardwiring while the walls are open beats an annual battery service on a wall that needs a lift to reach, and splitting the wall into two bands usually behaves better than one giant shade.

Should I just use the builder allowance?

Use it, and understand what it buys. Allowances are usually calculated against stock product cut down on site, which runs roughly $60 to $600 a window nationally, while custom coverings measured in the home and installed run roughly $250 to $2,600. The allowance covers secondary rooms perfectly well. It doesn't cover a dark bedroom, a glare-free office, a two story window wall, or drapery of any kind. Many people take the stock package for the back of the house and buy properly for the rooms they use.

My windows have drywall returns and no wood trim. What does that change?

Mostly the mounting. An inside mount usually still works, since a drywall return opening often has plenty of flat depth for a headrail. An outside mount is the harder one, since drywall by itself won't hold a bracket under load. That means hitting the framing above the opening or installing a mounting board first. Drapery hardware runs into the same problem with more weight on it, which is why blocking behind the drywall is worth asking for while the house is still open.