There's one detail that changes a café curtain more than any other, and it's rarely the first thing people ask about: fullness. Not the fabric, not the colour — the amount of cloth we actually put on the pole.
At Baywell, we tested a lot of ratios before settling on the ones we use now.
- All our pleated designs, in linen or cotton, are made at double fullness (x2)
- Our rod pocket design in linen is made at x1.5 fullness
- Our rod pocket design in cotton is made at double fullness (x2)
The difference comes down to weight. Our cotton is lighter than our linen, so it needs more fabric on the pole to fall the way we want it to.
What double fullness actually means
Double fullness means using fabric twice the width of your pole. A 100cm window takes 200cm of fabric, gathered along the pole. That extra fabric is what gives you folds instead of a flat sheet of curtain.
Why it hangs better
A café curtain is at its best when it looks unfussy, gently gathered, never stretched. Without enough fullness, linen and cotton in particular can look thin and a little sparse, like there wasn't quite enough to go round.
Double fullness gives the fabric somewhere to go. It falls into proper folds, catches the light differently as it moves, and reads as considered.
It's the difference between a curtain that covers a window and one that softens a room.
Sheers need it most
Alda, Elva and Noma, our lightest fabrics, are built to filter light rather than block it. Sheers like these need more fullness than heavier fabrics, not less. With too little fabric, they go flat and lose the quality that makes them worth having: that soft, textured, slightly moving quality that only shows up when there's enough fabric to gather.
The look we're after
Generous fullness is a quiet feature of the English interiors we admire most. Not fussy, not formal, just warm. The folds do the work: texture, movement, a room that feels lived in rather than styled.
When less makes sense
Some customers, working with heavier fabrics or a more pared-back look, choose less fullness - and for the right room, that's a fair call. But for most windows, somewhere between x1.5 and x2 gives you the best balance: enough fabric to feel generous, not so much that it feels overdone.