Budgeting Window Treatments for Your New Sheridan Home

Sheridan Window Treatments

A new house is the easiest job in this trade to get wrong, because everything looks finished before it actually is. Trim gets adjusted after the walkthrough. Drywall builds up in corners in ways no drawing predicts. Order window coverings straight off the builder plan and you'll be living with the difference for years. Here's when to measure a new Sheridan build and what actually happens between the plan and the finished opening.

What a builder allowance actually buys

Builder grade window coverings are stock product, ordered in quantity and cut to size on site rather than built for your specific opening. That's a reasonable way to finish a whole subdivision, and it's a perfectly fine answer in a laundry room or a guest bedroom. It stops being the answer the moment a room needs real darkness or real glare control.

The math explains why. Stock shades and blinds run roughly $60 to $600 a window nationally, custom measured and installed runs roughly $250 to $2,600. Allowances get calculated against the lower figure, and a Sheridan house finished entirely on that number will have gaps nobody mentioned at the design center.

Trim style and mounting decide what's possible

A new house rarely has one trim condition throughout. Some windows get full wood casing, sill and apron included. Others get drywall returns, where the drywall wraps straight into the opening and there's no wood trim to speak of.

Mounting depends on which one you've got. Inside mounts generally work on a drywall return, since there's often enough flat depth for a headrail. Outside mounts need something solid, and bare drywall doesn't qualify, which means anchoring into the framing above the opening or adding a mounting board first. A drapery rod carrying real fabric makes the same problem worse.

The fix is cheap only if it happens early. Blocking behind the drywall for future rod brackets costs a Sheridan builder a few minutes while the house is open, and it's a real job once everything's closed up and painted.

Phase the house instead of doing it all at once

A new house doesn't need every window covered on day one. What it needs immediately is privacy at eye level, bedrooms, bathrooms, a home office with a screen in the window, anything the street or a neighbor looks straight into. Inexpensive temporary paper shades handle the rest for a few months and come down without leaving marks.

After that, cover the rooms you actually live in, ordered as whole rooms rather than window by window, since that keeps everything in one dye lot. Drapery and other decorative layers come last, partly because they look best chosen against furniture that's already in place, and partly because drapery has to be measured after the finished flooring goes in.

Keep records as you go. A white shade ordered in 2008 isn't guaranteed to match a white ordered two years later, and the difference shows up fast in afternoon light. Write down the product line, the fabric name, the color code, and the mount type on every order, and a later room in your Sheridan house has a real shot at matching.

Measure the house that got built, not the plan

A number pulled off the blueprint is a guess with a decimal point on it. The finished opening in a Sheridan house depends on drywall thickness, corner bead at the edges, how the carpenter set the trim reveal, and a coat of paint that's trivial alone and not trivial stacked with everything else. Thirty six inches on paper can finish a half inch off in either direction, and it's rarely the same width top to bottom.

Measure once the walls are drywalled and trimmed, and once the paint is dry, ideally after the punch list closes too, since builders reset casing and shim sills during that final pass. Drapery breaks this rule: it waits for finished flooring, because the floor height sets the hem. Blinds and shades don't have that problem, since they hang from the top of the opening.

The two story great room window wall

Break a great room window wall into separate questions instead of treating it as one giant decision. In a Sheridan house, does the upper glass even need covering? A north facing wall in a comfortable room might not. A west facing wall that cooks the room every afternoon has found its whole problem right there. Whatever gets covered, nothing at that height is hand operable, so motorization is the practical choice, not an upgrade.

Battery motors run roughly $100 to $300 a window less than hardwired units, and that savings gets spent again every time a battery wand needs service, commonly about once a year, on a wall you need a lift to reach. Running power while the walls are still open is usually worth the extra step.

Very tall shades also behave worse at the edges, and one major manufacturer notes larger light gaps on shades 120 inches and taller or with a height to width ratio near four to one. Splitting the wall into an upper band and a lower band, each operated on its own, usually looks and performs better than a single oversized shade. Solar fabric is the common choice for the view, and its openness factor, roughly one to ten percent, sets how much glare control you get versus how much view you keep.

Phase it. Privacy first, then the rooms you actually live in, then the decorative layer once the furniture's in place. The great room wall can wait until you know what the sun does to it. Sheridan Window Treatments will walk a new Sheridan house with you and build a plan you can spread over a couple of seasons. We're insured and bonded. Call (317) 999-5154 to set up the first measure.

Frequently Asked Questions

When should window coverings be measured in a new build?

After the drywall is up and the trim and paint are finished, and ideally after the punch list is closed. Plan dimensions describe framing intent, not the finished opening you'll actually cover. Drywall thickness, corner bead, trim reveal, and paint all stack up, and an opening the plan calls thirty six inches can finish anywhere across a range. Builders also adjust trim after the walkthrough, so a measure taken earlier can go stale. Drapery is the exception and gets measured after the finished flooring is in.

Are builder blinds bad?

No, they're a stock product cut down on site, and they work fine as a starting point. What they aren't is tailored. A machine on site shortens the headrail and trims the slats and bottom rail, which leaves a cut edge rather than a factory one, and the hardware inside the headrail doesn't recenter when the rail gets shorter. You usually get one white and one light filtering fabric for the whole house. That's fine in a secondary room and thin in a bedroom you want genuinely dark.

Do I have to do the whole house at once?

Not at all, and most people shouldn't. Cover the rooms that need privacy before you move in, bedrooms, bathrooms, the front rooms, and anything at eye level from the street. Use inexpensive temporary paper shades everywhere else. Then do the rooms you actually live in, and leave drapery and decorative treatments for last. Living through one season tells you which windows are punishing, and that's information no showroom appointment can give you.