Getting Window Treatments Right in a New Brownsburg Home

Brownsburg Window Treatments

A new Brownsburg home comes with a builder allowance for window coverings and a long list of decisions the allowance doesn't cover. When to measure, how to mount around a drywall return, when to phase the job, and what to do about a two story wall of glass all matter more than which fabric you pick first.

What a builder allowance actually buys

What comes with a new house is a stock product, cut down at the design center to fit the plan's window sizes. It isn't a bad product, it's just not a finished answer. The color and opacity list is short, usually one white and one light filtering fabric for the whole house, and the package addresses none of the specific problems a room can have.

Stock coverings run roughly $60 to $600 a window nationally. Custom coverings, measured in the home and installed, run roughly $250 to $2,600. A Brownsburg builder allowance is sized against the first range, and knowing that gap exists before move-in day saves a lot of frustration at the design center.

The two story great room window wall

Take the great room wall in a Brownsburg house apart into pieces instead of pricing it as one line item. First, does the upper glass need covering at all. A comfortable, north facing room might not need it. A west facing room that's unusable by mid-afternoon has its entire problem sitting in that upper band. Second, operation, since nothing eighteen feet up moves by hand, motorization is simply how it gets run.

Battery motors cost roughly $100 to $300 a window less than hardwired ones, which is tempting until you remember a battery wand commonly needs fresh batteries about once a year, and this particular wall needs a lift to reach. If the walls are still open, running power now avoids that chore for good.

One giant shade also tends to underperform two smaller ones. Very tall shades give up more at the edges, and one major manufacturer notes bigger light gaps on shades 120 inches and taller or near a four to one height to width ratio. An upper band and a lower band, run independently, usually behave better. Solar fabric handles most view walls well, and openness factor, roughly one to ten percent, is the spec that trades glare control against how much view survives.

A new build rewards patience more than speed. Wait for the punch list, order the privacy rooms first, and let the rest follow once you've lived in the house a while. Brownsburg Window Treatments writes every scope and price down before ordering, as Indiana law requires on jobs over one hundred fifty dollars, so a new Brownsburg homeowner always knows what they agreed to. We're insured and bonded. Call (317) 999-5154 when your trim is finished.

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 Brownsburg 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.

Phase the house instead of doing it all at once

Cover what needs privacy first and let the rest wait. That means bedrooms, bathrooms, anything eye level from the street, and a home office with a screen facing outward. Inexpensive paper shades are the placeholder everywhere else, they cost almost nothing and come down clean.

The rooms you actually use come next, ordered whole rather than one window at a time so the fabric matches within the room. Drapery and top treatments go last, since they're chosen better once there's furniture in the room, and drapery specifically can't be measured until the finished floor is down.

Phasing has one real risk worth watching: dye lots. A white fabric ordered in 2008 isn't guaranteed to match one ordered a couple of years later, and you'll see it in a Brownsburg living room by mid-afternoon. Get the product line, fabric name, color code, and mount type written on every order to give the next phase a real chance of matching.

Trim style and mounting decide what's possible

Walk a new house and you'll find two different conditions at the windows. Some openings have full wood casing with a sill and an apron. Others have drywall returns, where the drywall itself wraps into the opening and there's no wood at all. That difference decides how a covering can mount.

An inside mount needs enough flat depth to hold a headrail, and a drywall return often has plenty. An outside mount needs something solid to screw into, and bare drywall isn't that, so it means hitting the framing above the opening or installing a mounting board first. Drapery hardware has the same problem in a heavier form, since a rod carrying real fabric pulls hard on whatever anchors it.

If the house is still open, this is the cheapest point in its life to add blocking behind the drywall for future drapery rods. It costs a Brownsburg builder a few minutes and saves a real headache once the walls are closed up and painted.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will custom coverings be ready when we move in?

Only if you order early enough. Custom lead times commonly run two to five weeks from the order going in, and the order can't go in until somebody has measured finished openings. If your trim and paint wrap up two weeks before closing, the math doesn't work for the whole house. The usual plan is to measure as soon as the trim is finished, order the privacy rooms first, hang inexpensive temporary shades everywhere else, and let the rest arrive on its own schedule.

If I finish rooms later, will everything still match?

Only if you keep records. Fabrics and painted finishes are produced in batches, so a white ordered in 2008 won't necessarily match a white ordered a year and a half later, and the difference shows in afternoon light. Ask for the product line, the fabric name, the color code, and the mount type to be written on every order, and keep a copy. Also order any single room complete rather than one window at a time, since matching within a room matters far more than matching between floors.

Do we need to run electrical for motorized shades on the great room wall?

If the walls are still open, it's worth doing. Battery motors run roughly $100 to $300 a window less than hardwired ones, but battery wands commonly need service about once a year, and a wall that tall usually needs a lift just to reach them. Hardwiring while the framing is exposed avoids that recurring chore for good. If the walls are already closed, battery power is still a completely workable answer, just budget for the yearly maintenance.