July 27, 2026

What Custom Drapery Costs in New York: An Honest Guide

Drapery

The Short Answer: What to Budget Per Window

For a typical New York project, budget per window for lined, pleated drapery, all in. That figure covers fabrication labor, lining, hardware, and installation, but not your fabric. On a standard prewar window, the ceiling height and the number of fabric widths in the pair are what move that figure. Motorized ripplefold on a wide living room opening, or a bay with a custom bent track, costs considerably more.

The single biggest variable is fabric, which is why we quote labor separately. A designer running an everyday COM linen and a designer running an embroidered silk will see very different totals on identical windows. Fabrication labor for hand finished pleated panels is priced per width, and yardage adds up fast at our usual fullness of about 2.6 times the width.

What Actually Drives Fabrication Cost

Labor scales with widths, not windows. A width is one full width of fabric off the bolt, and a generous pair needs more widths the wider the window. Fullness matters too. We fabricate at about 2.6x fullness as a baseline because it drapes properly; a workroom quoting meaningfully less is probably cutting fullness, and you will see it in the finished panel.

Details add real cost and real value. Hand sewn hems and interlining add cost per width. Pattern matching on a large repeat adds yardage and cutting time. Banding, leading edge trim, and contrast linings each add cost per panel depending on complexity. Sheers under drapery are a second treatment in their own right. None of this is padding; it is where the difference between decent and beautiful lives.

Ceiling height is the quiet multiplier. Taller ceilings add yardage to every width, more hemming labor, and often heavier hardware. On a loft project in Tribeca or a townhouse parlor floor, budget well above a standard-height window.

Hardware, Installation, and the Line Items Designers Forget

Quality traversing hardware is priced by the foot, for trade grade track and decorative rods with rings alike, before finials and brackets. Motorization adds cost per opening for battery or hardwired systems, plus electrician coordination if you are hardwiring, which is worth planning at rough in rather than after closing walls.

Installation in New York is priced per opening for standard mounts, more for concrete ceilings, plaster crown, pockets, or scaffolding heights. We measure and install with our own team out of our Long Island City workroom, which means one point of accountability from field measure to final steam. If a panel needs a hem adjustment after hanging, that is our problem to solve, not yours.

How to Get an Accurate Quote Fast

Send us window dimensions, mount heights, your fabric selections with repeat information, and the treatment style you have in mind. With that, we can turn around a detailed line item quote, so you can present real numbers to your client instead of a placeholder allowance.

If you are working on a project in the city, our New York workroom handles custom window treatments, upholstery, furniture, and bedding for trade professionals. You can see our capabilities and start a quote at valley.studio/new-york. Bring us the tricky windows. The bays, the radius walls, the sheers that run floor to ceiling in a tall room. That is the work we like best.