How to Measure Curtains for Sliding Glass Doors

Sliding glass doors are standard fixtures as patio entrances. They provide elegance to the overall ambiance of your home and act as space saving alternatives compared to conventional open & shut doors. While they provide a great view of your patio, they can also rob you of your privacy at times. Also, in summer time, with the Sun bearing down, glass doors (unless they are tinted), tend to bring in too much of direct sunlight. One of the simplest solutions, that can achieve the goal of protecting your privacy, as well as keep the insides cool by creating a sunlight buffer is to install curtains of course.

If you have any experience with sewing curtains, you will know that the right measurements make all the difference. Curtains need to be just rightly measured to cover a window or a door. Neither can they be too long nor too short. Hence it's absolutely essential that the curtains are measured properly. Rightly measured curtains that fit nicely look neat and proportioned. The thermal barrier that these curtains create between behind the door, helps in keeping your house cool.

Measuring Curtains For Sliding Glass Doors

It goes without saying that you need a tape measure for the operation, as it can provide you with a standardized measurement. You could either opt for a plastic tape, that is exclusively designed for tailoring measurements or a steel tape which can provide you with a much more accurate measure. If the doors are considerable large in size, you may need an elevated stool to reach the top of the doors for measurement purpose. The measurement that you need to make is extremely simple in essence. All you have to do is measure that height and width of the door. One vertical and one horizontal measurement is all you need to do.

Firstly you can make the height measurement. The height of the curtain will extend from the rod installed over the door, to the floor. So if you already have a rod in place, measure the distance between the rod center and the floor accurately. Make sure that the tape isn't bent when making this measurement. If you haven't installed a rod yet, make a pencil mark at the place where the rod center would be and measure the total length in centimeters or feet, from that point to the floor. From this height measurement, subtract an inch or two, so that the curtains don't drag on the floor and there is some amount of gap left there.

Once you are done with the height measurement, width measurement is simple. Just measure the distance between the border ends of the sliding glass door and add ten inches to the measurement to get the width of the curtains you'll get tailored. This is to ensure that the curtains cover the door properly. This concludes your measurement project. You can supply the dimensions of the curtain to the tailor, whom you are handing over the job to.

Now that you know all about measuring curtains for sliding glass doors, proceed with actual measurements. As suggested before, make sure that you lessen the height measurement for the curtain by an inch or more, so that some degree of clearance is left at the bottom. Also, it's a good idea to make the width of the curtain to be a bit more than the exact measurement of the sliding door, to ensure that it covers the door fully.