Sheers Vs Curtain Panels, Which One Is Right For Your Space?

Good morning,

Recently I was commenting on a post by a fellow blogger B is building a house in reply to if she should have curtain panels or sheers on a track. Funny enough we happen to have both here at our house.

The sheers were installed in our HGTV Color Splash makeover. They are really modern and clean, and definitely not something that I would have chosen on my own which is a good thing. They define and combine all our spaces really well and they give our home a very loungey feel. They also add allot of visual and textural interest and contrast.

Here is our house with the current sheers:

As you can see they are pretty much amazing all around!

Well, true to form with me I am having an evolution of taste when it comes to our home which originally stated with the black lacquer elements that Color Splash brought in. That's the beauty of working with a designer, they push you past your comfort level in to something that you yourself may not have chosen on your own and you learn so much along the way.

As I have been decorating our new master bedroom, and I started bringing black in to the mix of grey and white which added much needed drama (thank you Color Splash for opening my eyes to black)...and then came gold. Now I can't get over my new found love of Black and Gold and I want it EVERYWHERE!


Here are some inspirations that I pulled which are realistic to what could work in our home with minimal cost and effort based on what we have now:

It's not impossible to mix in my two new favorite colors with our current scheme to achieve the "feeling" that I want. Adding a little bit of gold and some more black would go a long way, as would new throw pillows and some accents.

The only thing I'm not sure about is keeping the current sheers. As much as we love them (Robert already told me he hates my new idea!), they block all the walls which prevents me from adding any art or displays, let alone a buffet or console anywhere. They also keep the house a bit dark for my taste, and block the views of the back yard and the view that we love back there. They don't look right when opened and since I have curtains in our master bedroom and the sheers are in the living room the view from outside our home is definitely off.

Here are pictures of the curtains open:

*Note that there are also roman shades behind the sheers which were ordered and paid for before HGTV came and installed after hence why it looks so damn off**

 And here are a couple of pictures of our home before the makeover when it had our old recycled curtains from our previous house (that I hated but used since we had them):

And here are the curtains that I would use that we already have in our master bedroom and love:

So I guess the ultimate question here is "What would you do? Keep the sheers and work around them, or replace them for a creamy version of curtains (similar to what's in our master bedroom)?"