The House of Drapery Method
How our design team thinks about a project — written so that every chapter of the Standards that follows can be read in the same key.
The Method is not a process diagram. It is a description of how we think. Every custom drapery project our studio accepts moves through the same four habits of mind, regardless of whether the room is a Beverly Hills primary suite, a Malibu oceanfront living room, a Hidden Hills nursery, or a hospitality program of two hundred guest rooms. The Standards that follow elaborate each habit in detail; this introduction explains why they exist in this order.
1. The room is read before the window is measured
Our designer does not begin with the window. She begins with the room — its architecture, its proportions, its light at different hours, the way furniture is placed, the way the family or business actually uses the space. A window is one element inside a room, and drapery is one element inside the design of that room. Treating the window in isolation is the most common reason a custom installation disappoints its owners a year later.
2. Function is specified before fabric
Before any fabric is shown, we agree on what the drapery is asked to do. Privacy at night, view preservation by day, blackout for sleep, glare control for a media room, UV protection for art and wood floors, acoustic softening of a hard-surfaced great room, insulation against heat or cold, motorization for hard-to-reach heights — these are decisions that constrain everything that follows. A drapery that is gorgeous and fails its function is a failed drapery.
3. Architecture is honored, not covered
Good drapery makes a room feel taller, calmer, and more composed than it did before. It does this by responding to the architecture — ceiling height, casing depth, wall returns, the rhythm of a row of windows — rather than apologizing for it. When the room has beautiful ceilings, we mount to honor them. When the casing is ornamental, we treat it as part of the composition. When the architecture is plain, drapery becomes the architecture.
4. The decision is explained, not asserted
Every recommendation our design team makes is accompanied by the reasoning behind it. We tell clients why a particular sheer is wrong for their oceanfront exposure even when it is the fabric they have already chosen. We tell them why mounting at the ceiling will cost more cloth and why the room will repay it. We tell them when a motorization upgrade is genuinely useful and when it is not. The client is not asked to take our word; they are given the information that lets them decide alongside us.
How to read the Standards
The Standards are organized as seven volumes, in the order in which decisions are actually made on a project: the Consultation, the Architecture of the Window, Cloth & Material, Heading, Hardware & Motion, Fabrication, Installation, and Stewardship. Each volume is written so that a homeowner can read it without prior knowledge, while a designer or architect can use it as a working reference.
We publish them in sequence. Volume I — The Consultation — is in publication now, beginning with the chapter that defines how every House of Drapery project begins.