for the most part, i prefer to the floor or just above. i'm trying to plan draperies for the new house now but they will be nothing like what we had at the old house... when i did the downstairs at our first place we did puddled curtains. my bff is a decorator and has been in the business for a thousand years. he knows EVERYONE. so they were made by a woman he stole from a professional work room and expertly hung by two specialists who spent over nine hours at my house steaming, fussing and arranging the draperies. this was not a weekend job for them. they told me they had been at the douglas-zeta jones residence the day before. i paid them $500 (not bad considering the time spent) and was asked in advance to provide six different flavors of ben & jerry's ice cream. seemed fair to me. plus it was august, after all. when they finished, the drapes were perfect and glorious. everyone commented on them. they were stunning. and then, one day i decided to pull out my vacuum cleaner and do a quick once around. so i picked up one side of the drapes and vacuumed the floor behind and below. and then i tried to puddle them in the exact, picture perfect arrangement as styled by the ultra fabulous team with the ice cream obsession. i was heartbroken. it wasn't easy but after a long time (...who knows, maybe an hour?) i finally brought them back to an acceptable state. from that point on, i never touched them, they never moved. i vacuumed AROUND them, always careful not to disturb their perfectness again -until the day we moved. so, no more puddled anything for me. romans or to the floor. that's about as dramatic as i'm ever going again.

Here's a photo from our last house. It was a Classic Pooh themed room in a 1914 bungalow, so it had tall windows with large, simple window trim. I think the trim really helped the look. I just sewed a simple rod pocket for the curtains and shirred them on tension rods inside the window. I used a simple D rod for the valance to cover the curtain header. (The picture was taken sitting on the bed, so the wood canopy of the bed obscures the wall above the windows; and please ignore the leaves on the floor as I had just moved the houseplants out to the porch after winter). Sill length was good for a kids' room since I did't have to worry about them getting stepped or pulled on, but I don't know that I've seen them used much outside of that. I generally prefer the longer lines of floor length (or almost floor length) curtains, which can still seem light and breezy if the fabric is soft, sheer, and unlined. They make the room look taller and more elegant, I think.

Congratulations on your new home! Full length curtains would look great at your windows. Whether you hem them to just break, or have them billow on the floor is a personal preference. if you have kids and pets I would hem them so they just break when they hit the floor. If you think of a pair of pants that are perfectly hemmed, they have a slight break in the line of the pant; that's the same idea for hemming curtains that just break.

I think it depends on the style of the drapes. I wish I saved the pic, but I saw an adorable nautical themed room where they did blue corduroy (with grommets) drapes tied back with rope. The room was pretty large as well, which might make a difference. My house has 3 guest/children's rooms. One room is large (14x17 or so) and would look great with drapes. The smallest bedroom might feel closed in.