GUIDE TO DRAPING

Specialists in Creative Venue Draping Techniques 

Drapes are a great way to enhance and completely transform your venue, making it look exactly how you want it to. We are specialists in creative venue draping techniques, offering everything from drape hire, creative designs and even building and fitting drapes and textures to enhance any event on many different levels. Whatever the venue, we have a vast range of options and materials available to create bespoke venue drapery fitting your event theme. Over the years we have transformed village halls, converted barns and many hotel function rooms. Having so many years of experience and events under our belt, we know exactly how to create the best drape installation. Here’s our guide into how we do it!

Wall Drapes

We pride ourselves on manufacturing all of our drapes in house by our experienced seamstress. The fabric we use is twice the weight of industry standard drapes, ensuring they are of the highest quality. We have pre-made white rippled wall drapes in stock in lengths of 3m & 3.3m to help keep costs down for clients. Our pre-made drapes are washed and steamed after every use to keep that crisp finish. They are also covered and hung in our warehouse so they are kept neat and clean for the next event they are needed for. They are always double checked by our production team before they go out again. As we are highly skilled professionals we can work with fabric straight from the roll, so your drapes are fashioned especially for your event and made to measure, meaning there is no limitation to height, width or colour. The most popular types of wall drapes we install are rippled, pleated and tack off. Below we have detailed what these types of drapes entail.

Rippled Drapes

Our rippled drapes are gathered at the top to create a tighter consistent s- like wave across the span of the drape. We stock these in lengths of 3m & 3.3m which are washed and steamed after every use to keep them clean and crisp.

Pleated Drapes

Much like the pleats you see in clothes, our pleated drapes are formed by doubling fabric back upon itself and securing it in place. 

Tack off Linings

As well as our rippled drapery service, we can also install tack off linings if this is your preferred style choice. Tack off linings can give a flat ‘wall’ like design where there is no wave or pleat in the fabric at all.

Ceiling Drapes

Ceiling drapes can add that extra touch of glamour and elegance to any venue. White voile is most commonly used for this type of drape, however our specialist in house team can create drapery in a variety of interesting colour and fabric types. Some venues lend themselves better to certain drape designs. For example, if the ceiling is quite low, adding ceiling drapes will make the space feel claustrophobic. Also, in order for the drapes to go up to an apex, there usually needs to be an apex in the ceiling (the walls are lower than the central ceiling point). Below we have detailed some of our most popular ceiling drape options.

Linear Ceiling Drapes

Drape is attached to the ceiling in a linear fashion, creating neat rows running along either the width or the length of your venue

Radial Vertical Ceiling Drapes

Usually installed from a central point and draped out to the outside of the room, the fabric used for vertical ceiling swags is normally gathered at the central point and left to drop to it’s full width vertically and tail to the outside of the room.

Radial Horizontal Ceiling Drapes

These ceiling swags are installed from a central point and draped out to the outside of the room lying flat.

Wall Drape Accessories

Add a touch of sparkle to your wall or ceiling drapes with our accessory options available to hire as an added extra. Our fairy light curtains look stunning as a feature wall and our uplighters are great for adding ambience to your event.

Fairy Light Curtain

Our fairy light curtains are created by using several different layers of fabric and fairy lights to produce a high quality fairy light curtain tailor made to your venue. 

Uplighters

Inject some colour into your event with our uplighters. They are a great addition to any draping, dramatically changing the mood of the room. They can also be set to almost any colour to suit your event theme.

Ceiling Drape Accessories

To define and highlight the ceiling drape lines, fairy light strings, festoon lighting and foliage garlands can run along the edges of the drape or in between the voile. 

Fairy Lights

Fairy light canopies are a great way to accentuate a naturally beautiful venue.

Festoon Lighting

Festoon lighting adds a warm and relaxed feel to your event, by providing a soft, ambient light swooping across your venue.

Foliage Garlands

Foliage garlands are intertwined with our fairy light strings to create a beautiful botanical setting.

DRAPING CHECKLIST

We have put together a checklist to help you collect all the information required to create an accurate draping quote: 

• DIMENSIONS
  To calculate how much drape is needed we will need the length, width & height of the room. If you only want part of the ceiling or walls draped, we will need the measurements for the specific space you want draping.

• CEILING ATTACHMENTS
  The drapes will need fixing from an attachment point in the venue in order to hang. If the venue has no attachment points then don’t worry, sometimes there are ways around this! We just need to know if there are ceiling attachments available and what kind of attachments these are.

• DRAPE STYLE
  As mentioned earlier in this document there are three main wall drape styles we work with; ripple, pleated and tack off and three main ceiling drape styles we work with; linear, radial vertical and radial horizontal. Let us know which is your preferred style!

• COVERAGE
  How many ceiling swags or wall drapes are installed depends on the amount of coverage you would like. Some clients want minimal coverage for a simple effect and may have 2 or 4 ceiling swags or one feature wall covered. Other clients prefer full coverage to have maximum impact and will have more ceiling swags or a full venue drape installed.

• COLOUR
  We can dress venues with any colour drape to match your event theme, however this may be more expensive than our standard white drapes to hire.

• FABRIC
  If you are after a specific type of material for your drapes, then please do let us know as prices will vary depending on fabric. Voile is usually used for ceiling drapes and either polyline or smooth fabric is usually used for wall drapes.

• PHOTOS
  It is helpful to see photos of the venue and perhaps an example of the sort of drape you are looking to achieve.

Please get in touch with us if you would like a venue drape quote putting together for your special day.