We will show you how, and we will still measure it again
Plenty of curtain companies write a page like this and withhold the useful half, so you give up and call them. We would rather tell you how it is done, because knowing it makes you a better customer of anyone — including us.
One thing up front, so the ending is not a surprise. If you order from us we will measure every window ourselves before anything is cut, whatever numbers you already have. That is not a comment on your tape work — it is because a curtain is cut to a number and cannot be let out afterwards. The full reason is at the end of this article rather than hidden in it.
What you need
A steel tape, not a cloth one. This matters more than it sounds. A dressmaker's tape stretches with age and pull, and cannot hold itself straight over a three-metre drop — it bows, and a bowed tape reads long. A steel tape stays rigid, extends vertically on its own, and gives the same number twice.
A ladder, or a second person. You cannot measure a three-metre drop accurately while reaching overhead from the floor. Hook the tape at the top and read it at the bottom.
Paper and a pen. Write each window down as you go, labelled by room and position — "living room, left of the TV" — not as a list of numbers. You will measure more windows than you think, and by the fourth you will not remember which was which.
Width: measure the track, not the window
This is the single most common misunderstanding, and everything follows from it. Your curtain does not hang from the glass. It hangs from a track or a pole, so the width you need is the width of the track, not the window.
If a track is already up, measure it end to end. If there is not one yet, you are not measuring a feature but a decision: work out where the track will go, mark the two ends, then measure between them.
Where should the ends sit? Past the reveal on both sides, by a hand's width or more where the wall allows. That does two jobs: it stops daylight spilling down the sides of a closed curtain — the gap people notice at six in the morning — and it gives the open curtain somewhere to sit that is not on top of the glass.
Drop: from the track, and where the hem lands
Measure from the track down, not from the ceiling and not from the top of the window. For a hooked heading, start where the hook sits in the glider; for wave, start at the top of the track itself. Those starting points differ by a few centimetres, which is exactly the sort of difference that shows.
Then decide where the hem stops. Three honest options.
Breaking on the floor — a centimetre or two of fabric resting on the ground. Generous and formal, and in Dubai it also collects dust, gets walked on, and sits in the path of floor-level air. Reserve it for villa reception rooms and majlis, where the look is the point.
Just clear of the floor — about a centimetre of daylight under the hem. The right answer for nearly every apartment here: it reads tailored, moves freely, and does not sweep the floor every time the curtain is drawn.
Sill length — only where something physically prevents a full drop: a kitchen counter, a bathroom fitting, furniture that cannot move. A practical answer, not an aesthetic one.
Measure in three places, and expect three numbers
Take the width at three heights along the track line, and the drop at three points: left, centre, right.
They will not match, and that is normal rather than alarming. Walls are not parallel, floors are not level, ceilings dip. Across a three-metre opening in a new tower, a centimetre or two of variation is ordinary.
What you do with them matters: do not average. Averaging is what produces a curtain that drags at one end and floats at the other. Record all three and let whoever makes the curtain work to the real shape of the opening. That is what separates made-to-measure from ready-made, and it is the step amateurs skip because two of the numbers look like mistakes.
Stack: the fabric has to go somewhere
Stack width is the space a curtain takes up when fully open, and it is the measurement nobody thinks about until the curtains are up and half the view has gone.
Drawn back, the fabric does not disappear — it concertinas into a bundle at the end of the track. How wide that bundle is depends on the heading, the fullness and the thickness of the cloth, and on a tall window it is more substantial than people picture.
So a track sized to the glass gives you a curtain that covers the glass even when open. Extend it past the reveal and the stack lands on the wall instead. Headings differ here too — wave stacks tighter than a pinch pleat, which is one of the real reasons to choose it in an apartment. Fullness also decides how much fabric crosses your width, which is one of the things that moves a quotation; that side of it is in our guide to what curtains really cost in Dubai.
Ceiling or wall, briefly
Fixing to the ceiling gains height and closes the light gap above the heading, so it is usually the better look. Whether it is possible depends on what the ceiling and the wall above the window are made of, and in most Dubai towers that is drywall rather than concrete — which changes the fixing entirely and is not decided from the floor. It is one of the things worth checking yourself at handover, covered in a window plan for your first month.
The mistakes that ruin an order
- Measuring the window instead of the track. The most common of all, and it produces a curtain too narrow to close properly and too short to look right.
- Guessing the drop from ceiling height. Ceiling height is not drop. The track hangs below the slab, the bracket has depth, the hook sits below the glider, the hem stops above the floor. Four small subtractions, none of them guesses.
- Measuring one window in a room of four. They look identical and are almost never identical — construction tolerances in a new tower are wider than the tolerance a curtain has.
- Rounding to a neat number. Round a width up and the track will not fit; round a drop and the hem sits a centimetre off, invisible on paper and obvious along a whole wall.
- Measuring before the flooring is laid. Tile, timber and thick rugs all raise the floor, so a drop taken over bare screed turns "just clear" into "dragging" the week the flooring goes down.
So why do we measure again?
Not because you cannot. Most people who follow the steps above get numbers that are close.
The reason is simpler: whoever takes the measurement carries the mistake. Fabric is cut to a number, and a curtain cut short cannot be let out. If we work from a figure you supplied and it is a centimetre off, you would be the one paying for the remake — and we are not willing to sell on those terms. When the number is ours, the remake is ours too. That is what stands behind our guarantee, and the only honest way to offer it is to take the number ourselves.
The visit also does more than measure. It establishes what the wall and ceiling are made of, where the track can genuinely be fixed, how light behaves in that room at the hour you use it, and whether a window wants something other than what you assumed. Numbers are the easy part; the rest is what the survey is for, set out stage by stage in how it works.
Measure your own windows first — then let us check
Take your own measurements anyway. Walking into a quotation already knowing your own windows is worth doing even if you never buy from us.
Then a supervisor comes to you free, for about 45 minutes, measures every window twice, and puts the risk on our side of the table. We measure and fit across all seven emirates.
Book your free measurement — no obligation.