What sort of curtains to buy? And where from?

24/7 online, great material choice and good price even for insulated curtains.

Would recommend John Lewis, but a lot will depend on your preferences for price and quality. Not a lot of places to look around these days.

This is a great time to be looking in the sales.

Ask locally for recommendations for makers,as the better quality often comes from them.

B&Q do reasonable budget ones. Dunelm do have odd fabrics in their ready-made section that are as good as their made-to-measure, but it does take a search through

Curtains 2 Go and its sister site Blinds 2 Go are very reasonable. You have to put the measurements into the info fields yourself but it will calculate the cost there and then.
What has always impressed me is the support and after sales service. They will email you after you have placed your order for you to double check your measurements (they give you a four hour window to amend anything). They also keep you informed of the progress of your order right up to delivery.
You can order free swatches of fabric if you are uncertain of colour/quality/feel etc, but the price ranges and brands tend to give an indication of quality.
My best experience with them was ordering some roman blinds and matching curtains for our newly refurbished kitchen/garden room. I discovered that every choice I made for the blinds didn't come with matching curtains (there are a lot of matching fabrics on both sites but it seemed every one I liked wasn't available for curtains!). I rang them to ask and nothing was too much trouble. Of course they could make me matching curtains, I just gave them the curtain measurements over the phone with my fabric choice.
Over the past ten years in this house I have replaced every window treatment with curtains or blinds from this company. They have never let me down.

Germanshepherdsmum

John Lewis?

John Lewis sale is particularly good, my daughter got 3 huge pairs of curtains for her living room which cover a huge expanse of glass. I don't think that everything that is in the sale is online, if you go to a larger shop (as she did) you can see all the end of line curtains.
B&Q have quite a few too, some are awful but others are really nice.
You can always have separate lining if you want, hooked onto the curtain tape between the hanging hooks.

kittylester

MiniMoon

I had to have my patio doors imported from Germany as I couldn't get the width in UK. I would need double width curtains. Do any off the peg curtains come in double width?

You could buy two pairs and have them joined?

Yes, it isn't difficult. You could actually stitch them together at the top near the tape and it's unlikely that the split would show if they were quite gathered. This also makes it easier to wash them if you buy a washable fabric, you can simply undo the tops. A double width curtain is pretty hard to wash in a normal machine.

I've also bought lovely second hand curtains on Ebay, made from Liberty fabric by Collier Campbell. There are often huge pairs on sale there and it doesn't cost a huge amount to get them shortened, though I usually do it myself.
Have you looked at the shops that sell second hand curtains? There's a lot of rubbish in there but sometimes they are good and often they sell relatively inexpensive fabrics (such as those from Prestigious Textiles) and can make them up in-house for a reasonable price.

I also recommend John Lewis. When I needed six pairs of the same curtains of a type which were being discontinued, they checked all their branches and managed to supply the last two pairs I needed from Solihull (nowhere near me).

Just before xmas, my son was looking for curtains for his rented room (4 large windows).
He'd looked at Dunelm and was looking at almost £700 for 4 pairs of curtains. I looked at amazon and found comparable ones for a total of £150.

John Lewis every time.

I always made my own curtains until I needed some for our dining room last year & my sewing machine had stopped working & I couldn't be bothered to get it fixed. I actually bought a pair from Dunhelm. They are perfect for the room and the quality is very good - I'm fussy after making my own & for others for so long! I'm surprised how many have been so disparaging about them!

If anyone sees second hand curtains that are too long ( with mitered corners) and you feel you can’t tackle that, take off excess from the top of the curtains.

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Curtains 2 Go or John Lewis

Curtains 24/7 ready made are cheap as chips. I added Dunelm clip on thermal linings to a country look pair of bedroom curtains from Curtains 24/7 and they are fine.

Gone are the days of pleats and folds for me poles and eyelet curtains. Not much effort really and quick to put up with help if required. Mine are in every room all different sizes etc lovely quality from Dunelm and reasonable prices.

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Reported

I usually make my own and have bought both fabric and ready made from Terry's Fabrics which offered both quality and decent prices. Same goes for Dunelm - quality always been top notch.

Julian Charles online.

ClicketyClick

I usually make my own and have bought both fabric and ready made from Terry's Fabrics which offered both quality and decent prices. Same goes for Dunelm - quality always been top notch.

Have you seen the date of the OP?
I would imagine that the OP has the curtains up by now.