Hanging Curtains with Drapery Hooks

Let’s talk about hanging curtains with drapery hooks! I shared on an instagram live the other day about hanging my mom’s drapes. They are ready made curtains but hanging them on drapery hooks and adding folds gives a professional, finished look.

Inserting Drapery Hooks

• use drapery hooks to hang your curtains. It’s like inserting a safety pin; they are very sharp so be careful! I prefer to insert them about a quarter of an inch to an inch below the top of the curtain. This really depends on the drop of your curtain rings. I prefer not to see the loop that you place this hook in on the ring. In this photo, I went lower because I have pretty big rings.
• the easiest way to space out your drapery hooks is to lay the drape flat and insert on each end. Fold the drape in half, place a hook there. Take that half section and fold it in half, place a hook there. Take one of those sections and fold in half, place a hook there. Keep going until you feel like you have enough to support the weight of the drape; it’s usually about 7-10.
  • Another tip: on my drape, I have 14 hooks and rings. When we close the drapes, I don’t want to see any sagging between the rings so I did almost twice as many rings as usual. A typical, professionally made single width pinch pleat panel has about 7 hooks. A single width unpleated panel is about twice as wide as a pleated, so you’re gonna need more hooks to get a professional finish.

Hanging with the Hooks

• insert the drapery hook through the eye hole on the bottom of the drapery ring.
• once you have them all inserted, I recommend pushing the fabric between each ring to the back of the drape. This gives pretty folds to the curtain and a beautiful, hanging, drapery effect.
• on the very last hook, there are two methods to get the edge of the drape to be perpendicular with the wall. You want this because it creates that last fold in the curtain and it helps block more sunlight from the window.
  • adjust the final drapery hook to be a little closer to the next one, rather than on the very edge. This will allow that final section of the curtain to hang right against the wall. This is what I have done above.
  • OR you can take the last drapery ring and hang it on the bracket. I cannot do that in our den because I open and close these drapes on a daily basis, and I have them hung way beyond the window frame to make it feel larger; we have to slide these drapes way over to cover the window.

Applicable to Any Curtain

The best thing about hanging with drapery hooks is that is so easy to apply on any curtain! For the love, please don’t hang your drapes on a rod pocket or with clips. If you’ve done this, it’s okay, I have, too. Even if you are using the clip on style rings, there is usually a little hook eye that you can place a drapery hook into.

Sources

The drapes above and what I used in the instagram live are a fabulous brand I found on Amazon. I have a long list of my favorites saved. When the budget doesn’t allow for custom made, these are my go to for myself and clients! Many of the options are blackout lined making them ideal for bedrooms. Here’s a few favorites:

I’ve also got a list of my favorite Amazon drapery rods. I have one of them in my dining room! It’s a modern touch to the vintage floral drapes but still traditional with the glass finial.

Happy decorating y’all! And thank you so much for coming here for ideas and using my links! I really can’t thank you enough! If you enjoyed this decorating tip, check out my other decor posts.