Curtain styles Bangkok: seven headings, and the fabric each one wants

Most guides to curtain styles stop at the styles. We'd rather carry on to the cloth.

The curtain styles Bangkok workrooms make most often are the same short list you'll find anywhere: wave, pinch pleat, goblet, pencil pleat, eyelet, a Roman blind. What nobody tells you is which of them your fabric actually wants — and the fabric has opinions. A pleat and a large printed floral are quietly at war.

So here's the order of play. First, every style in a few lines, so you know what you're looking at. Then the more interesting part: letting your cloth choose between them. If you haven't found the cloth yet, start in the fabric library — our guide to where to buy designer fabric in Bangkok helps if the books are new to you.

Curtain styles at a glance

There are seven curtain styles worth knowing: the wave (or S-fold), the double pinch pleat, the triple pinch pleat, the goblet, the pencil pleat and the eyelet, which all hang in folds from a track or pole, and the Roman blind, which lifts in flat horizontal layers instead.

The curtains are named for their heading — the way the top is pleated and hung — and each comes with a fullness: how much wider the flat fabric is than the track it hangs from. At 2.5× fullness, a two-metre track takes five metres of cloth, and that extra is what makes the folds. Our curtain calculator does the sums for your own window.

Wave (S-fold)

The wave — ม่านลอน — hangs in soft, even S-curves from top to bottom, with no sewn pleats at all. It's clean and contemporary, and the natural choice for floor-to-ceiling condo windows, sheers and plains. It runs on its own track at 2.3× fullness. The gliders, the little runners inside the track, sit 60 mm or 80 mm apart; 80 mm gives deeper waves, fewer of them.

Double pinch pleat

The double pinch pleat gathers the top into evenly spaced pleats of two folds each, so the curtain falls in crisp, regular columns. It's the tailored, hotel-like finish for bedrooms and living rooms. It hangs from hooks on a track or rings on a pole, at about 2.5× fullness.

Triple pinch pleat

The triple pinch pleat has three folds to each pleat, so it sits deeper and hangs fuller. In Thai it's ม่านจีบ 3 จีบ — pinch pleats are counted by finger here, and three is the default. English often calls it a French pleat, so two quotations naming different headings may mean the same one. Allow 2.75× fullness, on a track or pole.

Double or triple pinch pleat: what's the difference?

A double pinch pleat has two folds to each pleat; a triple has three. The double suits lighter cloth and looks clean and modern. The triple is fuller and more formal, and holds heavy fabric in line. It uses more cloth, 2.75× against about 2.5×, so it costs more.

Goblet

Rounded, cup-shaped pleats along the top, like a row of wine glasses, each cup stiffened to hold its shape. In Thai it's ม่านจีบถ้วย. It's the dressiest heading, best for grand dining and drawing rooms or dress curtains that rarely close, because it won't fold back neatly when open and the cups collect dust. Allow 2.5× fullness, on a track or pole.

Pencil pleat

Narrow, continuous gathers drawn up on a corded heading tape (the stiffened band sewn along the top) — the classic British default. It works on a pole or a track at about 2.5× fullness, adjustable at the tape. There's no settled Thai retail term, so Thai shops specify ม่านจีบ by finger-count instead. It's also the one style here our calculator leaves out.

Eyelet

ม่านตาไก่ — ตาไก่ means "chicken eye", which is the ring. Metal rings set into the top of the cloth slide along a pole, making deep, relaxed folds. It's the easy-going choice for living spaces and kids' rooms that open and close every day, and at 2× fullness it takes the least cloth of any curtain heading.

Roman blind

ม่านพับ, literally "folding curtain": one flat panel that draws up into neat horizontal folds, stacking about 20–30 cm deep at the top. (Not the roller blind, which is ม่านม้วน.) It hangs flat from its own rail with no fullness, so it uses far less fabric than any curtain. It suits kitchens, studies and small or deep-set windows.

The pleat eats the pattern

A pinch pleat buries whatever sits inside the fold. Your pattern survives on the flat faces between pleats and nowhere else: lovely for a small sprig, cruel to a big one. A pencil pleat is stricter still: its gather is continuous, so there are no flat faces at all. A wave shows more, because the cloth curves rather than folds. A Roman blind shows most, being simply flat when it's down.

A repeat, if the word is new, is the distance before a pattern starts again. And a big one quietly costs you cloth: every width must be cut to a whole number of repeats, so the pattern lines up with its neighbour. Say a 260 cm drop: add roughly 30 cm for hems and header and you need a 290 cm cut. On a cloth with a 53 cm repeat, 290 ÷ 53 = 5.47, which rounds up to six repeats — a 318 cm cut. That's 28 cm binned on every width, and a wide window needs several. A plain wastes none of it.

Where the seams land is a style decision too

Fabric comes on rolls around 137–145 cm wide, so a three-metre window needs several widths joined. A pinch pleat can hide a seam inside a fold; a wave leaves it in full view down a curve.

Sheers are the hard case: every join shows against the light. That's why a wide-width sheer — cloth woven far wider than the usual 140 cm — is turned sideways and run as one seamless piece across a whole wall. The Forager from Morris & Co includes one. Ask for a transparent heading tape, too: a coloured one shows straight through.

Sheers, plains and light weaves: wave, almost always

Anything light wants to move, and wave lets it. It also carries a large pattern as one continuous undulation, rather than chopping it into columns.

Its honest weakness: wave panels can't overlap where they meet, so a closed pair leaks light down the centre and over the top, even in blackout cloth. What goes behind the face fabric is a decision of its own, covered in our guide to blackout, dim-out and sheer linings.

With plains and textured weaves it's a free choice. Aubrey is the case in point: a recycled-polyester herringbone, 140 cm wide, in 33 colourways, rated at 50,000 Martindale rubs — the standard rub test for wear — and so tough enough for hotel and office work. No motif to bury, no repeat to match.

Florian gives you the same freedom in its stripes and woven textures at 138–140 cm, with hand-painted florals in the same book if you'd rather have pattern. Wave for modern, pinch pleat for tailored — and a stripe is one of the few patterns a fold flatters.

A large print wants to hang flat

Arden is watercolour floral at its most generous: 137–138 cm, cotton or cotton-linen, made for drapery. Flora & Foliage Vol I poses the same happy problem — botanical prints, woven leaves and plush cut velvets at 136–140 cm.

Both deserve to be seen whole, so the order runs: a Roman blind, then a wave, then a pinch pleat, which gives you the pattern on the flat faces. A pencil pleat will gather your beautiful floral into a rope.

Blinds want a medium-weight, non-stretch cloth, and Thai workrooms rightly say they suit narrower windows: joining two panels across a wide one leaves a line down the middle of your uninterrupted pattern.

Weight wants structure

This is where the triple pinch pleat earns its keep. Toulouse makes the case: Indienne prints over textured weaves and jacquards, 138–145 cm, warm earthy tones, with a hard-wearing upholstery plain (Lois) in the book. Weight wants holding in vertical columns, not left to drift.

Cut velvet asks for the same, plus one thing more: the pile must run the same way on every panel, or two curtains from one roll will read as two colours. A heavy pile wants a pinch or pencil heading, never eyelets. And if the room is formal enough to carry it, a goblet gives the same weight a little theatre.

The casual counterpoint: eyelet

Eyelet sits at the other end of the scale, happiest with relaxed plains and easy weaves that don't mind a loose fold. Thai retailers lead with the practical argument: eyelet curtains come down and go in the wash with no hooks to unpick.

Two caveats. Light enters over the top through the ring gaps, so it isn't for a room you need dark. And practice diverges — British makers treat eyelet as pole-only, while Thai and American workrooms happily run it on a track.

Three Bangkok things to check before you fall for a style

• The ceiling recess decides more than you'd expect. The Thai curtain recess (หลุมฝ้า, or ดรอปฝ้า) is usually built at about 20 cm during fit-out, long before anyone chooses a curtain — and a two-layer wave set wants nearer 28 cm. That arrangement, ผ้าม่าน 2 ชั้น on a double track (ราง 2 ชั้น), is near-universal here, and the local convention reverses the European one: the sheer (ม่านโปร่ง) hangs nearest the glass, the opaque (ม่านทึบ) room-side.
• Dust season is real. From December to March the city gets dusty, and Thai retailers say it themselves: pleats collect dust and are the least practical heading to take down and wash, while wave and eyelet panels come off easily. Not a verdict against pleats — a trade-off against how good they look.
• Cleaning shrinks curtains. Dry cleaning can take up to about 5% off a curtain — around 10 cm on a full-length pair, and on a 2.6 m condo drop, a hem that no longer reaches the floor. Some Bangkok cleaners won't take coated blackout cloth at all.

How ordering works, in three steps

• Measure. Width, drop, fixing surface, whatever's in the way. Our curtain calculator gives you a first idea of the metres your style needs; the on-site measuring visit then makes it exact. That visit carries a ฿1,000 fee, credited in full when you order; the conversation before it — a design consultation — is always free.
• Select. Fabric, lining, heading — in that order, because the first narrows the third.
• Make and hang. Made to your measurements, then hung by our own team. Nothing off a shelf.

Our curtains and soft furnishings service covers all three.

Come and see how it hangs

Fabric photographs badly. Weight, drape and the way a colour behaves in Bangkok daylight only make sense in person — which is what the Ashley Wilde and Morris & Co books in our showroom are for. We're in Wang Thonglang, just off Lat Phrao — bring a photo of the window and take as long as you like with the books.

Or begin from the sofa: run your window through the curtain calculator, then tell us about your windows, in English or Thai.