curtain rail

[Mike]

I'm looking for one curtain rail to fit a bay window, total length

3200mm / 10'6". The curtains are quite heavy; the drop is nearly 3 metres. I've always used Swish Deluxe in the past, but that seems not available in long enough lengths. Please suggest a white curtain rail where the curtains runs freely round the bends, and the brackets don't break easily. Or, does the Swish Deluxe track joiner work well?

Take the dog out before emailing.

[Brian Reay]

We had a similar problem several houses back.

Sorry I can't recall the make we used but I simply bought some Aluminium rail, which has finished in white. I carefully cut through the 'lip' on the back where the supports clipped at the points where I needed to made the bends (the bay was made of several flat windows- I can't recall how many- probably 5) I then simply bent the rail carefully. I fixed the rail, with brackets on either side of each bend and one in the middle of each straight run. The curtain 'ran' fine, 'senior management' approved and the curtains were quite heavy- full length (may be a 6' drop) and lined. The only thing I couldn't figure out was how to make them 'cord pull' to close.

[Mike Clarke]

You can get Swish Superluxe up to 5 metres long, e.g.

We have 3 metre lengths of this in two bay windows and heavy curtains run quite freely on it.

It comes in two sections with a joiner. The joiner is well supported if you follow the recommended bracket spacing with a bracket close to each side of the joiner. The joint should be no problem but the curtain overlap does need to to coincide with the joint.

Because of the joint you have a separate cording set for each section but we don't find this any problem, in fact it's quite an advantage, it makes heavy curtains easier to draw and can sometimes be quite useful if you need to just partially close one side to cut down dazzle from the sun.

Although the track feels quite stiff it can be bent to a ten inch radius although I found heating with a hairdryer was a great help. Having once bent it to the required radius it stayed there without springing back.

[PeterC]

There's aluminium, not corded in this example:

and plastic, corded:

[podcastmike]

Follow up:

Thanks for advice. I used Swish Supreme Glide which is aluminium, the gliders have rollers. The extrusion is similar to Swish Deluxe, but the two channels in the aly version are different from each other. It doesn't run as smoothly as you would hope, the butt joint works better than you might hope. But job done.

[tabbypurr]

How do you know what I'd hope? What lube did you use?

NT