Valances & Top Treatments

Valances & Top Treatments in Fortville by Fortville Window Treatments

Decoration, sold as decoration, not light control

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Quick Answer

A quick summary before the details: this is a made-to-order product, measured in the home and built to your numbers. The answers here explain what that means for pricing, timing and what happens if something fails.

  • Service: Valances & Top Treatments for Fortville homeowners
  • Service area: Fortville, IN and surrounding areas
    • We book measures without much delay. What you can't compress is the fabrication window, which runs two to five weeks depending on the product and the finish. Painted shutter finishes sit at the longer end.
  • Insured and bonded
  • Serving Fortville, IN since 2008
Valances & Top Treatments Services

Expert Valances & Top Treatments for Fortville Homes

Top treatments do their best work where the architecture already puts something above the window. On the north east side of Fortville, the Vermillion, Sedalia and Gallatin streets carry the town's largest block of post-1990 production housing, part of 269 units from the 1990s and 475 from 2000 to 2019, and those elevations use half round or rectangular transoms over the front facing windows with breakfast bays at the rear. A board mounted valance under a transom gives the window a defined top edge and hides a headrail without fighting the shape above it. The 1849 plat is the other candidate, where high head heights leave real wall to work with.

A top treatment is decoration and it should be sold as decoration. It will not close the light gap at the top of a shade, it does not improve privacy, and it adds height above the opening that some walls simply don't have. In the newest Fortville houses at Beyers Estates and Mt. Vernon North, openings are bare drywall returns that often run close to the ceiling, so there's nowhere to mount a board and nothing for it to relate to. A hard cornice needs more projection than a soft valance and looks heavier. If the wall can't give you the height, the honest answer is to skip it and spend the money on the shade.

When to Call

Signs You Need Valances & Top Treatments

If you notice any of these in your Fortville home, it is worth booking a measure. None of it is urgent, and none of it fixes itself either.

Cold air drops off the glass onto your feet

A powder room window sits completely bare

Shade stack covers the top of the glass

A print chosen years ago now dates the room

The pattern lands differently on every window

Valances on one wall sit at different heights

Brackets and cords show above the shade

Long drapery isn't practical over a sink

One window in a run doesn't match the others

A dining room wants formality without panels

Our Process

How Fortville Window Treatments Handles Valances & Top Treatments

Every job follows the same five-step process. Transparent, thorough, and done right the first time.

1

Style chosen for the room

2

Order placed, profile drawn

3

Swags dressed, folds arranged

4

Written contract issued, IC 24-5-11

5

Cleaning and removal walked through

Real Project Photos

Valances & Top Treatments in Fortville

Photographs from real valances & top treatments jobs completed by our crew in Fortville and surrounding areas.

Custom shades measured and installed in FortvillePlantation shutters fitted to a Fortville windowCellular shades in a Fortville living room
Scope of Work

What Valances & Top Treatments Includes

Every Fortville job is documented item by item. Here is what the crew covers.

Whatever is already at the window documented first, since a top treatment nearly always goes over an existing shade or rod

Headrail depth, bracket projection and any hanging chain measured so the treatment clears what sits behind it

Mounting height set above the opening wherever the window needs to read taller than it is

Finished width run past the trim on both sides so the treatment frames the window instead of sitting on it

Depth proportioned against the full window height rather than taken from a catalog default

Return depth dimensioned to clear the hardware behind it plus a working gap for hands

Style chosen room by room: box pleat, gathered, swag with cascades, shaped hem or an upholstered cornice

Cornice profile drawn full size and checked against the wall before any frame gets cut

Fabric run direction and pattern placement decided so the motif centers on the window rather than wherever it lands

Pattern repeat matched across a bay or a run of windows so every treatment starts at the same point in the design

Welt, banding or applied trim chosen with a physical sample laid against the face fabric in the room

Buckram or interlining added where the fabric needs to hold a crisp edge instead of collapsing

Lining specified so every window presents the same face to the street

Mounting board width, depth and angle brackets sized to the weight and the return

Fasteners landed in framing or in rated anchors, because a cornice hangs off the wall on a lever arm

Access left open for battery wands, motor heads and lift cords living behind the treatment

Level checked across the whole run, since a top treatment sits at eye height and shows a slope instantly

Swags and folds dressed by hand on site, because nothing ships already arranged

Pricing

What Valances and Top Treatments Cost in Fortville

The closest published national figure is the custom drapery range of roughly $300 to $4,000 per window. Top treatments generally sit at the lower end of that, since there's far less cloth in a valance than in a pair of floor-length panels. Read it as a national category range and not a quote for a room in Fortville. What moves the number is construction more than size. A rod-pocket valance in a mid-priced fabric is a modest line item. An upholstered cornice is a built object: a frame gets cut to a drawn profile, padded, wrapped and trimmed by hand. Add a large pattern repeat across four windows in Hancock County and the yardage climbs before anyone starts stapling.

By Product

How Valances & Top Treatments Differ by Product

Every product in this trade behaves differently in a room. Here is what that means for this work.

Upholstered cornice: A wood frame cut to a drawn profile, padded and wrapped in fabric, then hung above the window. It reads architectural rather than soft, it hides a headrail completely, and it holds a straight top line that no fabric valance can match.

Box pleat valance: Flat panels separated by crisp inverted pleats at regular intervals. It's tailored without being stiff, it suits a stripe or a solid better than a busy print, and the pleat spacing gets set to the window width instead of a default.

Gathered valance: Fabric shirred onto a board or a rod at two or two and a half times fullness. It's the softest of the board-mounted options and the most forgiving of a lightweight fabric, and it belongs in rooms that already lean traditional.

Swag with cascades: A draped center section with tails falling at each side. It carries real formality and it needs ceiling height to look right. The cut is done on the bias so the folds fall properly, which is why a swag is not a beginner project.

Shaped hem valance: A board-mounted valance whose lower edge is cut to a curve, an arch or a scallop instead of running straight. The shape gets drawn to the actual window width so the low points land where you want them, not wherever the pattern piece says.

Flat tailored valance: A single unpleated panel on a board, often with banding at the hem or the sides. It's the quietest top treatment there is, and it's what we specify in a room that wants the headrail hidden without adding any period flavor.

Rod-pocket valance: The simplest version, gathered onto a decorative rod above the window. It costs least, it comes down for cleaning easily, and it works where the treatment is decorative and nothing structural has to be hidden behind it.

Welt, banding and applied trim: A contrast cord at the edge, a flat band inset from the hem, or a fringe along the bottom. This is where a plain treatment gets its personality, and it's also where a second color from the room gets pulled up to the window.

Buckram and interlining: Stiffener and a soft flannel layer built into the treatment so pleats stand up and edges stay sharp. Skip them and a valance sags in the middle within a season, which is the usual reason a ready-made one looks wrong.

Mounting board and angle brackets: The board the treatment staples to and the metal brackets that carry it. Board depth has to clear the shade hardware behind, and bracket spacing has to suit the weight, especially on a cornice with a deep return.

Common Questions

Valances & Top Treatments FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Fortville homeowners considering valances & top treatments.

No, and that's the most common misunderstanding about the product. A valance hangs in front of the headrail with air behind it, so light coming over the top of a shade passes behind the valance and into the room exactly as before. What closes that gap is a cassette with a light blocking pocket at the head, which is part of the shade rather than a separate treatment. A valance does hide the hardware, which is a real aesthetic job, and on an outside mounted shade it also hides the brackets. Buy it for the look and specify the shade properly for the light.
Carefully, and sometimes you don't. Where the transom is a separate unit above the main opening, the treatment usually mounts to the wall in the band between them if there's enough height, which on the 1990s and 2000s elevations around Sedalia Drive and Alzada Drive is often only a few inches. Where there isn't room, the better move is to treat the transom and the window as one opening and mount above both, which makes the window read taller. What we avoid is a valance that cuts across the bottom of a half round, because it makes the arch look like a mistake.
A cornice is a rigid upholstered box that gives a crisp architectural line and needs real projection to clear the shade behind it. A board mounted valance is fabric stapled to a board and returned at each end, so it shapes softly but still reads as built in. A rod mounted valance slides onto a rod like a short curtain and is the most casual and the least expensive. In a formal room in the Geist facing plats, a cornice suits the scale. In a 1950s State Street grid house with a low head height, a shallow board mounted valance is usually the only one that fits.
They make more sense there than people assume, because the opening has nothing else to define it. In the current builder product at Mt. Vernon North and Beyers Estates, the opening is a bare drywall return with a soft corner and no trim anywhere, so a board mounted treatment is the only thing that gives the window a top edge. The constraint is height: those openings often sit close to the ceiling. Where there's four or five inches of wall, a shallow valance works. Where there isn't, a fascia on the shade itself gives you the finished line instead, and we'd take that.
Enough to clear the shade, its brackets and any projection from the wall, which people consistently underestimate. An outside mounted roller shade sits forward of the wall, and the valance return has to pass in front of it without touching the fabric as it rolls. In the 1849 plat there's a second complication: storm window build ups on original wood windows push the whole assembly further out, sometimes by an inch and a half. We measure the projection of the finished shade and then build the return to clear it, which is why the top treatment gets ordered after the shade rather than alongside it.
When the wall can't give you the height, when the shade already has a fascia doing the same job, or when the window is one of many in a room and treating them all would cost more than it returns. A pre-1940 house on the 1849 plat can carry 14 to 22 openings with almost no repeats, and top treatments on every one of them would read as busy and cost a fortune. We'd put them on the two or three windows that face the street or anchor the room, and leave the rest with a well specified shade. Restraint is cheaper and usually looks better.
Two things. It hides hardware, so the headrail, the brackets and the top of a roller stop being the first thing you see at the window. And it finishes the composition, giving the window a top edge and a bit of softness that a hard treatment alone doesn't have. In a lot of rooms it's the last ten percent that makes the window look designed instead of merely covered. It also mounts above the opening, which makes the window read taller than it measures.
Deep enough to look deliberate and shallow enough to leave your glass alone. A treatment that's too shallow reads like a headband sitting on top of the window, and one that's too deep eats daylight for the rest of its life. We work it against the full height of the window rather than a fixed number, then mock the depth up with a piece of card taped to the wall so you can look at it from the sofa before anything is cut.
A cornice is a built object with a wood frame, so it holds a dead-straight top line and a crisp profile forever. A fabric valance is softer, lighter and easier to change your mind about. Cornices suit rooms with clean architecture and rooms where a headrail has to disappear completely. Fabric suits rooms that want movement. Cost usually runs higher on the cornice because somebody is cutting a frame to a drawn profile before the upholstery even starts.
Usually, and the measurement that decides it is the return depth. The treatment has to project far enough off the wall to clear the headrail, the brackets and any chain or wand hanging behind it, with room left for a hand. We measure that at the window before ordering. Where it goes wrong is a treatment ordered off a size chart without anyone checking what's behind it, and then it fouls the shade every time you raise it.
Yes, and it's one of the more satisfying small projects in this trade. Most people who call about a top treatment already have shades that work fine and a room that still looks unfinished. We measure what's there, work out the return, and build to it. The only real constraint is wall above the opening: if the shade is mounted tight to the ceiling there may be nowhere for a board to go, in which case a rod-pocket treatment on a slim rod is sometimes the way through.
Higher than the opening, in almost every case. Mounting a treatment at the top of the trim makes the window look shorter and squashes the whole wall. Taking the board up toward the ceiling stretches the window visually and gets the treatment out of the daylight. How far depends on your ceiling and on what else is on the wall. In a room with a run of windows, all of them go on one line, even if the openings themselves aren't at one height.
No, and that's exactly why people come to us for this. A top treatment on its own is the answer when you want the softness of fabric without panels stacking on the wall, without floor-length cloth in a kitchen, and without the cost of a full drapery job. Plenty of rooms end there and look finished. If you want the height and the frame that panels bring, a treatment over stationary panels is a good middle option that costs less than working drapery.
It can, and that's a real risk with the wrong style rather than with the category. A heavy swag with fringe in a room with clean lines will look like it arrived from another decade. A flat tailored valance with a contrast band, or an upholstered cornice with a straight profile, reads current and will keep reading current. The style is the decision, not whether to have a top treatment at all. We bring photographs of both directions rather than talking about it in the abstract.
Vacuum the face with a brush attachment a few times a year, and pay attention to the top surface of a cornice, which collects dust nobody sees from below. Steam wrinkles rather than pressing them. For real cleaning, a cleaner who handles fabric window treatments should take it down and rehang it. Don't wash a lined or interlined treatment at home. The layers shrink at different rates and a valance that comes back wavy along the hem can't be rescued.
Yes, and the pattern is the part to get right. Each section gets its own board and its own treatment, and the corners need working out so the returns meet cleanly rather than colliding. The bigger job is matching the repeat, so the design starts at the same point on every section and reads as one treatment wrapping the bay. We template the angles on site, because a bay in an older Fortville house is rarely the angle on anybody's drawing.
A wood mounting board fastened to the wall on angle brackets, with the treatment stapled or hooked to the board. It sounds simple and the failure mode is always the same: a cornice hangs off the wall on a lever arm, so a deep return multiplies the pull on whatever the brackets are screwed into. We find framing where it exists and use anchors rated for the load where it doesn't. Bracket spacing gets set by the weight, not by habit.
It helps and it isn't a substitute for the right hardware. A treatment mounted above the opening with a solid return does close off the path where daylight comes over the top of a roller, and in a den or a living room that's often enough. In a bedroom that has to be genuinely dark, the honest answer is a light-blocking pocket or a closed cassette doing that job properly, with the top treatment sitting over it for looks.
Only if nobody plans for it. Motorized shades have a motor head at one end and, on battery versions, a wand or a battery tube that has to come out roughly once a year. A cornice built tight to the wall over that assembly turns an annual five-minute job into a project. We leave access, either by sizing the return generously or by building the treatment to lift off its board, and we tell you which end the motor lives on.
Kitchens, where floor-length fabric is impractical but the window still looks bare. Powder rooms, where there's no room for anything else and a small treatment does a lot. Dining rooms, where formality is welcome. And any room where a shade is already doing the work and the window still reads unfinished. The rooms where we'd push back are ones with low ceilings and short windows, since anything at the top costs you daylight you can't spare.
Areas We Serve

Valances & Top Treatments Across Fortville

We measure and install in every one of these Fortville neighborhoods. Each has its own page with the build eras, window conditions and mounting notes for that section.

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Contact Information

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Our team prioritizes scheduled measures and service calls, and books in-home measures during business hours.

Office
1417 Commerce Avenue, Indianapolis, IN 46201
Hours
Mon-Fri 8a-6p
Service Area
Fortville, IN and Surrounding Areas

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Call us to set up an in-home measure, or to ask about a treatment that has stopped working. We will talk it through on the phone first.

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