DIY Folding Screen

Lots of us have a window above our beds - and lots of us hate it.

There are two basic ways to deal with the situation - embrace it and put up some pretty window treatment or just hide the window. A folding screen is an easy way to hide an awkward window.

I bought one large blue sheet of insulation board for $15 at Home Depot and asked the guy in the cutting department to cut the sheet in 16" lengths (there ended up being six pieces).


Then I sketched a template for the shape I wanted at the top of each piece of the screen


And traced the shape on to each of my five folding screen pieces, but a different heights. The highest piece was cut to be three inches taller than the window.



After cutting out the top shape, I upholstered each folding screen piece with a layer of thin quilting batting and some fabric.


I ran out of staples halfway through the project and resorted to duct tape, which I thought worked even better than the staples!


After all the fabric and batting was attached to the insulation boards, my sweet husband put all the screens together for me while I made dinner. Team work!


We used a couple boxes of brass plated decorative hinges from Home Depot, extra long screws and some nuts to assemble it all together.

What with all the cheesy components - insulation board! duct tape! decorative hinges! - I thought the screen would be a little on the fragile side, but no. The screen is very sturdy and it folds well, for the record.


The final step was trimming out the front of the screens with some cream woven 1/4" flat tape from the fabric store. Just used a bit of Fabritac here to glue on the trim.

The screen blocks out the light from the window, so it's not obvious there is a window there. Which is the point.

note: while these pictures were taken in my bedroom, this screen is destined for another room. I just wanted to share the idea with you all, since I get many questions about how to address the "window-above-the-bed" issue. I threw together the styling here with basement stuff (lamps, tables, pillows, etc) just to give you a quick sense of what could be done with a folding screen in a bedroom. Pictures of my newly finished bedroom are on the way, complete with a different idea for addressing the same window issue.