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5 Cornice Options To Make Your Drapery Treatment Stand Out

27 January 2016

Alide Oortwijn

One of the biggest decoration choices in most rooms is the drapery treatment. The material, placement, and style of drapes can drastically change the look and feel of a room. While you are deciding on drapes for your room, you will have to decide whether you want a valence, cornice, or a clean, uncovered top. A cornice can be easily made to match your drapes and provide interest to your room. 

Match the Drapes 

While traditional cornice boxes may have been wooden boxes that were a way to bring the wall out and around your drapes, modern cornice boxes are usually covered in tightly stretched fabric, which gives you almost unlimited design options. Instead of looking for a neutral fabric that will match your walls, you should consider matching the fabric of your drapes instead. This works especially well if you have a large, loud pattern on your drapes that you want to feature in your room. Because the drapes will usually hang with plenty of folds and gathers, the contrast with a tightly stretched piece of the same fabric will add more visual interest to your design. 

Match the Furniture

Instead of matching just the drapes, you can use the cornice to tie the drapery treatment into the overall design on your room by matching it to your furniture. For a look that shows extreme attention to detail, considering sewing stripes into your cornice with fabric that matches your flooring on the bottom, your furniture in the middle, and your drapes at the top. This will create a layering effect that matches the natural gradient found in your room. 

Pillar Illusions 

Cornice boxes traditionally extend all the way across a window, but they do not have to. For a unique look, you can create a small cornice box at each side of the window and then hang thick, matching drapes inside the cornice box. This will create the illusion of pillars on either side of your window. Unfortunately, this minimizes the functionality of your drapes because you will not be able to close them, but you can still install a drapery bar with a sheer curtain between the two cornice boxes for additional privacy. 

Consider Adding Fringe or an Overlay

Cornices generally create a stark, hard line in whichever room they are used. However, you can explore adding a bit of fringe or an overlay of fabric to soften their appearance and give them the feel of a valance.  A piece of sheer fabric added to your cornice and gathered in the center can help an older cornice match new drapes or a new look in your room. With fringe, you can either add a layer of short fringe along the entire edge of the cornice or you can add gathered tassels in line with your window frame or between each window if your cornice covers multiple windows. 

Explore Molding Options

Whether your cornice is wood or covered in fabric, you may want to add wooden molding pieces to the top and/or bottom edge of the cornice. If you match your molding on your cornice to the molding in the rest of your room, it can tie your drapery treatment into your overall decor. This can leave you free to select a more vibrant pattern for your drapes without risk of having your drapery treatment look out of place in your room. 

Alternatively, you can use molding pieces to create a more elaborate, luxurious appearance on your cornice. Painting molding a color that contrasts with the rest of the room and then picking up that color in your curtains can add more visual interest to your room. 

Once you have decided to add a cornice to your window coverings, make sure you consider the many ways this type of window treatment can be integrated into your overall interior design. 

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