Why would you want a door curtain instead of a real door? For one thing, air circulation. If you want air to circulate through your house, you need to keep the doors open. If the next room is always a mess, or storage area, a curtain can obscure the sight of it some and still allow the air circulation. Door curtains are also useful for closets where there is not enough room for doors to open into the room, and you don’t like the big sliding doors or the multi-panel louvered doors, both of which run on tracks on the floor across the closet opening. This track is a nuisance when cleaning and just in general. A door curtain, or several, can close off this storage area and still add for texture and pattern to the room’s decor.

Door curtains can be hung on tension rods within the door frame, or regular curtain rods mounter above or outside the door frame. The curtain material can be very light, so heavy curtain rods are not necessary. To give the door curtain a little more pizazz and weight, buy a beaded door curtain or sew small beads on the lower portion of the curtain yourself. There are also bead fringes you can add above the hem of the curtain to add substance and swish to the curtain. I would recommend placing the fringe so it does not extend below the curtain in order to prevent excessive wear by stepping on it or getting it caught in the vacuum cleaner.

Off and on home fashions provide curtain scarves, long plain pieces of sheer curtain material with beads or beaded fringe sewn onto the ends or along one side. If you can find some that suit the room’s decor, it would be easy to convert these into door panel curtains. A simple seam to create a pocket for the curtain rod and you are done. If these are not available at the time you are looking for door curtains, and you do not like the sheer curtains available, you can make your own from fabric. This option will also allow you to pick patterns or border material that is not available in ready-made curtains. A rod pocket at one end and a hem at the other and you are in business.

You can support people in other cultures by buying door curtains made overseas. Door curtains are common in the Indian sub-continent, and the Japanese also use door curtains. Some of these could make your home into a cultural exploration. Beaded curtains can add an international flair to an otherwise American room.

Finally, there are the beaded door curtains you remember from your youth: the bamboo curtain with the hula girl, or the plastic beaded door curtain with suns and moons. These beaded door curtains are still available in many designs, and can bring back memories of your school days or a vacation.

For a simple makeover to a room, try door curtains. You do not need to take the door into the room off, just cover it with another door curtain. Now the entrance to your room is a two panel fabric statement instead of the usually white painted door and empty space. With door curtains you can still hear what goes on in other rooms while what you are doing is not as visible. (Sneaky moms can use this to their advantage. When everything gets quiet, you know what to do: go find out what the kids are doing.)

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