Given your druthers, what is your preferred window treatment? Poll up shortly.
I actually had to check this, as I wasn’t sure. We have two sets of curtains. One reach to the bottom of the windowsill; the others reach to the bottom of the floor. I could have sworn both were just sill-height, but I guess not. Those are fine. No valence, though.
I also am fine with horizontal blinds. I have a borderline irrational hatred of vertical blinds, though. Don’t know why, they drive me absolutely nuts. We do have a set for the patio door that don’t bug me too much, but at our other house, the previous owners (okay, my parents), had vertical blinds in the living room and dining room, and those were the first thing to come down and go into the trash when we bought it. I don’t know why I hate them so much, but they just aesthetically offend me. Yet horizontal blinds don’t, for some reason.
It depends. In our vacation home we needed no window covering, it’s beautiful outside, hills, trees, stream that’s why I got the place, I’m not covering it up and I don’t care if a bear sees me, their naked too.
Other places it depends on what’s outside. Blinds are a easy and out of the way method to have something when needed, so I’ll go with that.
One thing I don’t understand are people who cover up their windows so you can never see out. WTF is with that? Why not just get a wall light panel and put closed curtains over that and put it on a timer where it turns on during the day. With that you can’t even need to put it on a exterior wall.
I have a mix. Shades, drapes, nekkid French doors. My window seats have just valances.
Maybe you hate them for the same reason I hate them: they remind me of a car wash.
My only preferences for window treatments is that they be cheap and not fragile. All my windows are treated with cheap Ikea curtains hanging on cheap Ikea rods. Since I have floor to ceiling, wall to wall windows on my east and west exposures, anything else would have cost a fortune.
I forgot to vote when I started this. The first three options cover our windows (heh - I made a funnee!!) I absolutely hate the idea of the long drapes that pool on the floor - dunno if they’re still fashionable, but for a while that style seemed to crop up in all the design magazines. And I agree about vertical blinds - just no. I’m not that crazy about miniblinds either, but I love our cellular blinds - they hide behind the valence when not in use, but they’re easy to pull down if necessary, like for blinding sun (like today.)
Other. We have 8 4x8 foot windows pointing south (used to have 13, but remodel happens). At 11,200 feet in Colorado. Passive solar don’t you know. Sometimes, it’s not that passive. January 4, and about 80 degrees in here. So none for us. We have no neighbors, and we aren’t proud and ain’t ashamed 
:shrug:
Blinding sun! Woohoo! For the first time in a month, the sun shone yesterday!
It won’t be out again for at least a week though. 
After living in rentals for 90% of my adult life, I loathe blinds. Stripey shadows, loose strings, and they break if you look at them wrong, so you lose your security deposit. Even vertical blinds; slide them to get access to your window and they don’t stop swinging for what seems like an hour.
I want what I grew up with: sheers for the daytime and drapes to close when the sun goes down. Just below the window, though. Longer ones get in the way.
My current home has wide slat wooden Venetian blinds behind floor to ceiling lined draperies. No valances. Drapes reach the floor but don’t pool.
Very conventional. My family bought the house after the family home burned down about 5 years ago. We just had a decorator come in and furnish the whole thing, she did the window treatments as well. It’s kind of living in the Arrested Development model home.
In my previous home, I did something a little unconventional. I had a moderately heavy unlined drape + sheer panels. After experimenting, I hung the sheer panels in front of the drape instead of behind them. The effect of the morning sun through both treatments was beautiful.
We have blinds in our windows, but not valences, so I couldn’t vote. I hate curtains, which I find stifling.
“Black paint” wasn’t a choice. 
My MIL made us Roman shades for all of our windows. My wife picked out the fabric then her mother made them.
I know they’re not chic, but I like curtains (often called cafe curtains) that start almost halfway down the window, so I can see sky and trees, but block street-level views. I keep them long so that breezes don’t lift the curtains high enough to expose whatever we get up to indoors.
We have bare windows in our bedroom. We have no neighbors or passerbys. The other bedrooms have blinds, but they’re rarely used.
We’re on the ground floor so most of our windows have honeycomb blinds which can be pulled down or up, depending on sun, privacy wishes, etc.
The living room has sheers and curtains. The sheers go down to the windowsill on the windows, and down to the floor on the french doors. The curtains go down to the floor along the entire wall (which has a bend in it, so it doesn’t look as weird as it sounds.
Outside the windows we have horizontal aluminum blinds. Most buildings in Switzerland have external blinds for temperature control. If it starts hailing, we have to put the blinds up, as they will get damaged by the hail. This is one of those things that everybody here, who grew up with these blinds, knows already. And they wonder why anybody would have to be told to do this.
No valences anywhere.
Depends on the room and type of window.
Master bedroom: had a sliding door to the back yard. It has dark floor length drapes and blackout curtains behind those. There are times this room needs to be very dark.
Family room/kitchen: wood blinds on kitchen sink window that never get closed; floor length sheers on the slider that goes to the yard. This room never needs to be dark.
Almost every room has different window dressing…just blinds, just sheers, curtains (window sill length), blinds and drapes, drapes and black out curtains, just drapes.
What we don’t have any of: metal blinds of any sort, vertical blinds, valences, and nothing pooling on the floor.
Just blinds. I am but a simple being.
Actually, I like the small amount of light my blinds let in, even when they’re closed. My eyes get pretty sensitive to light when it’s dark, so turning a light on when I’ve been in complete blackness for hours is fucking hell. So when I wake up, there’s either some light from the sun, or light from the lamps outside. Both help me adjust to actually turning a light on faster.
Blinds and curtains for maximum flexibility.
I went whole house pleated shades, honeycombed, cordless, top down bottom up. Not in need of room darkening. But have cafe curtains in the kitchen, funky nuclear housewives pattern.
Curtains cover my closet openings, clearance stuff from The Company Store. A little faded now but hides my deplorable closet denizens.
It depends on the window and the room, but I chose to vote for just curtains to just below the windowsill and just above the floor.
In a bedroom I prefer some sort of blind.