Thanks so very much for posting those. Very, very helpful. It's funny, but they don't look as dark in the hanging photos as they do in the other ones with just the sample. Imagine them on 6 huge windows in one room -- pictures are below. Would this work do you think? As I mentioned earlier, I had purchased curtains in a pearl shade but they basically matched the sectional too perfectly without contrast. I wanted to warm up the room a bit too. Thanks to all for the decorating help. I want to make a decision so I can order from PB before their cheaper shipping deal runs out! Here is a link that might be useful: family room

Unless you're using custom, stock curtain sizes are going to dictate how high you hang them. Approx 94, 108 or 120". You can add a couple of inches with rings as they did in the photo. The general advice is to go high and wide but I personally don't like it when the rod is jammed against the ceiling. This graphic gives good advice about height and width.

I originally planned to do a roman shade, but a friend suggested fun curtains and I fell in love with these. (eld616, I will have to check out that roman shade site, it looks cool). I had envisioned hanging them like Partim suggested but when it came time to hubby hanging the bar I started googling how to hang curtains and panicked. My children are 10, 13, and 15 y/o so I am not worried about Tarzan scenario, lol. Very good comment from Yvonne about the illusion that stairs aren't there; I hadn't thought about that. I still really want to use these curtains as I found coordinating pillows, a clock, and cool frames for pics of the kids surfing and at the beach. I think the comment about hanging them high and it looking formal is a good point. Also, even though I am 6 ft tall, I don't think I would be able to open and close the curtain on the stair side if they were hung too high.

I don't have close-ups of the hardware, but here you can see the curtains I mentioned in my previous post from a distance. We made the curtain rod and brackets with the black and white curtains out of steel pipe and fittings so it was easy to just use a plain threaded flange on the left side to screw the rod into. In our guest bedroom I wanted something less industrial looking, so we used normal Pottery Barn hardware on the right, and on the left we repurposed an old flange that was part of a wall bracket and I spray painted it to match the rod and other hardware. In your situation I would suggest hanging your curtains from drapery rings (rather than pole pockets) to make it super easy to open them when you need to access the door and close them when you want privacy. I guess because I have curtains hung against walls, I don't think it would automatically look bad in your case, especially if you used something light and airy. It won't be obvious that the door is so close to the fireplace if you hang the bracket in just the right spot so the curtains cover the edge of the left door but don't overlap with the fireplace. I actually hung our curtains in part because I didn't like how the windows looked kind of crammed against the walls. The curtains allowed me to make the windows look more balanced, at least to my eye. I'm not a pro though, so take my advice for what it's worth ;)