Bungalow Curtains in Goa

Walk the house at two times of day — mid-morning and late afternoon — and note where the sun is hitting the glass. In Goa the west light is the harshest, and it lands on whichever rooms face that way, whether bedroom, kitchen or sitting room. Those rooms get lined curtains. East bedrooms get blackout. North-facing rooms can often have sheers alone.

Writing the plan down, room by room, also makes it possible to phase the work: bedrooms and west rooms first, the rest later.

Garden doors are used constantly in a bungalow. The curtain track should extend well beyond the door frame so the fabric stacks against the wall, and a ripple-fold or pinch-pleat heading keeps the stack narrow. Make the curtains just clear the floor; they will be brushed by feet and pets coming in from the garden.

On a verandah, use outdoor fabrics or chik blinds rather than indoor curtains. A curtain on the inside of the door can then stay light.

Pick one main fabric for most of the house — often a linen or linen-look weave in a warm neutral — and a second, heavier one for the bedrooms. Add colour through one or two rooms, not all of them. This keeps the house calm and means that if one room's curtains fade or are damaged, matching them is straightforward.

Many Goan bungalows built a few decades ago have timber casement windows that open inward, and sometimes iron grilles. Curtains must clear the opening casement — a track fixed higher and wider than the frame, or a rod on brackets that stand off the wall. Plaster on older walls can be soft, so fixings need to go into sound masonry.