Curtain length gets discussed as a style question and lived with as a practical one. The panel that looks best in a magazine is often the one you'll resent every time you vacuum, and the safest-looking choice is sometimes the one that makes a window look like it shrank. What follows is how we think about it in the workroom, hem by hem, with the room and the floor and the fabric all getting a vote. For the arithmetic on your specific window, our curtain length calculator will give you the finished panel length in a few seconds.
The five lengths, and what each one is like
Float stops half an inch above the floor. It hangs dead straight, never collects dust, never drags, and survives dogs, toddlers, and weekly vacuuming without complaint. It's what we recommend to most households and what we'd put in our own homes.
Kiss just touches the floor. It's the most tailored of the floor lengths and the least forgiving, because it advertises every quarter inch your floor is out of level. In a new build with a flat slab it looks superb. In a 1925 bungalow it will touch at one end of the window and float at the other, and you'll see it.
Break adds 1 to 2 inches so the hem folds softly where it meets the floor, the way a trouser hem rests on a shoe. It's relaxed and generous, it hides an uneven floor completely, and it's the most forgiving length if you're not certain of your measurements.
Puddle adds 6 to 12 inches of fabric pooling on the ground, with 6 to 8 the sweet spot. Less than that reads as an accident. More than 12 and the fabric looks collapsed rather than romantic. A puddle needs re-arranging every time the floor gets cleaned, which is why it belongs in formal rooms rather than busy ones.
Sill and apron are the short answers. Sill ends level with the window sill; apron stops about 4 inches below it. Neither is a compromise when the window has something underneath it, and both are wrong when it doesn't.
Floors are rarely level, and hems tell on them
This is the part that surprises people. Measure rod to floor at the left edge, the center, and the right edge of every window, and in older Los Angeles housing you'll routinely find a half inch of variation across a single opening. Sometimes more. A panel cut to one number will then kiss on one side and hover on the other.
We hemmed a pair for a Silver Lake bungalow last year where the floor dropped three quarters of an inch from one side of the window to the other. Cutting to a kiss would have looked broken. We built to a float off the shortest measurement instead, which put the low side at about an inch and a quarter of clearance, and in the room nobody can see it. That is the general rule: build to the shortest rod-to-floor measurement, and if the spread is bad enough to bother you, choose a break and let the fabric absorb the difference.
Room by room
Living rooms take floor length almost without exception, usually a float, occasionally a break if the room leans traditional. This is where pleated panels earn their keep, since a structured header holds a long drop in disciplined folds instead of letting it slump.
Bedrooms want a float and generous width, because length here is light control as much as decoration. A hem that stops short leaves a glowing band at the bottom of the window at sunrise.
Dining rooms are the one place we regularly recommend a puddle. Nobody is vacuuming under the table twice a week, the room is used deliberately rather than constantly, and the extra fabric reads as generosity.
Kitchens and baths take sill or apron length nearly every time. There's a counter, a sink, or a radiator in the way, and fabric near a stove is a genuinely bad idea. Rod pocket panels and cafe curtains do most of the work in these rooms.
What's under the window decides more than taste does
Before you choose anything, look below the sill. Baseboard heaters and radiators need clearance, both because covering them wastes the heat and because fabric sitting against a heat source is a hazard. Window seats, benches, and built-in cabinetry end the floor-length conversation outright. Deep sills, common in Spanish Revival and Craftsman houses, push panels forward far enough that a floor-length treatment needs a deeper bracket projection to clear the sill at all.
Radiators are the case people fight hardest and lose. A floor-length panel in front of a working radiator either bakes or blocks, and frequently both. Apron length above the unit is the answer, and it looks entirely correct once the rod is hung high enough to give the window some height.
Fabric changes what a length looks like
The same measurement behaves differently depending on what it's cut from. Linen relaxes over the first few weeks and will settle noticeably lower than it hung on day one, so we account for that when we cut. It also takes a break or a puddle beautifully, since the fiber wants to fold softly. Velvet is heavy enough to hold whatever line you give it, which makes a kiss achievable and a puddle substantial rather than limp. Sheers are the least forgiving of all, because light passes through the fabric and silhouettes the exact position of the hem against the floor. If you're hanging sheers, measure twice.
Header style matters too. Panels on rings hang from the ring's eye, about an inch below the rod, so pinch pleat and custom drapery panels on rings measure differently than grommet panels, which ride the rod directly. Tell whoever is sewing your panels which header you've chosen, because an inch is the difference between a float and a drag.
Why ready-made lengths land wrong, and what to do after hanging
Stock panels come in 63, 84, 96, 108, and 120 inches. Rooms don't. Once you've hung the rod where it belongs, near the ceiling rather than just above the frame, the rod-to-floor measurement almost never matches one of those numbers, which is why so many ready-made curtains end up floating four inches off the ground. Tall rooms feel it worst, and it's the reason our 108 inch page exists at all.
If panels are already up and slightly long, hemming after hanging is normal and often smarter, because fabric relaxes and you can pin the real length in place. Let them hang a full week first, pin at the floor, then hem. If they're too short, your options are a horizontal contrast band at the bottom, which looks deliberate when it's done in a matching weight, or starting over. Panels we sew are cut to your measured drop for exactly this reason, and every order gets a human review of the numbers before anything is cut. The full rulebook lives in our measuring guide, panel width and yardage come from the window measurement tool, and made-to-order panels ship nationwide in about 3 to 4 weeks.
Frequently asked questions
How far should curtains be off the floor?
For the float, which is the length we recommend to most households, the answer is half an inch. That gap is small enough that nobody reads it as a gap and large enough that the hem never drags, never sweeps up dust, and never gets caught under a vacuum. Go much past three quarters of an inch and the eye starts to see daylight under the fabric, which reads as a panel that came up short. Go to zero and you've chosen the kiss instead, which is a different look with different demands on your floor.
How high should curtains be off the floor?
It depends entirely on whether the panel is meant to reach the floor at all. Floor-length curtains should sit within half an inch of it, and anything in the range of 2 to 6 inches above the floor looks like a mistake rather than a decision. But there are lengths that deliberately stop much higher: sill length ends level with the window sill, apron length stops about 4 inches below the sill, and cafe panels cover only the lower half of the glass. Those are the right answer over kitchen counters, radiators, window seats, and deep sills, where a floor-length panel has nowhere to go.
How long should bedroom curtains be?
Floor length, in almost every bedroom, and usually a float rather than a break or a puddle. Bedrooms get walked through barefoot at night and vacuumed often enough that fabric on the floor becomes an annoyance quickly. The other bedroom-specific point is that length is doing light control work here, not just decoration: a hem that stops short leaves a bright band at the bottom of the window that will wake you at sunrise no matter how good the lining is. If the room needs real darkness, run the panel to a float or a kiss, hang the rod high and wide, and let the fabric overlap the frame generously at the sides.
How do you choose curtain length?
Work in this order and the decision makes itself. Settle the rod height first, because length is measured from where the fabric hangs, not from the window. Then look at what's under the window: a counter, radiator, or window seat rules out floor length before taste gets a vote. If the floor is clear, pick your hem relationship from float, kiss, break, or puddle based on how the room actually gets used, not how it photographs. Finally, measure rod to floor at three points across the window, because floors are rarely level and the shortest measurement is the one you build to.