Dream It, Do It: How to Paint Your Curtains

For a quick, low-stress room update, skip the walls and try painting your curtains!

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It might sound weird, but regular old latex paint on curtains can add up to lots o’ drama (the good kind).

1. Wash and hem your curtain panel to fit your window (we used inexpensive Ritva curtains from Ikea for twelve dollars a pop).

How to Paint Curtains

Photo: Young House Love

2. Lay your curtain flat on a drop cloth and apply horizontal stripes of painter’s tape across the entire curtain at equal increments (we did six stripes that were about 12 inches thick).

3. Thin your paint with textile medium. We used latex paint thinned out with Folk Art Textile Medium from the craft store. (Just follow the directions on the bottle.)

4. Using a small foam roller, apply two thin coats of paint for each of your stripes. We alternated between Benjamin Moore’s Caliente and Berry Fizz to make our bold red and magenta stripes.

5. Carefully remove the tape as soon as you’re done with your last coat of paint to get the cleanest lines and repeat the process on as many curtain panels as you’d like. When everything’s dry, hang those babies up.

Young House Love

Photo: Young House Love

This DIY comes to us straight from Sherry and John Petersik, the charming husband-and-wife duo behind the beloved blog Young House Love. With an eye for budgets, a dedication to simplicity, and a seemingly never-ending trove of ideas for updating your space, it’s no wonder this team is making a serious name for themselves in the home improvement world. Following the success of their blog and their whole-house transformation, the Petersiks released a New York Times bestseller, Young House Love: 243 Ways to Paint, Craft, Update & Show Your Home Some Love, and frankly, we loved it. We can’t wait to see what they come up with next!