· Michael Blair
Arched tops, angled gable windows, transoms above doors and windows meeting at a corner are common in Nashville houses of a certain vintage, and they are where the standard catalogue stops helping. Each has a normal solution, and the first question is always whether the covering needs to move.
Decide whether it has to operate
Most odd-shaped windows are high, decorative and out of reach, and they exist to bring light in rather than to be looked through. A fixed treatment that never moves is dramatically cheaper, more reliable and better looking than a mechanism engineered to move through an arc.
The exceptions are where glare falls on a screen or a seating position at a specific time of day, and where a bedroom needs genuine darkness. Those justify the expense of something that operates; a decorative transom over a front door almost never does.
The standard answers by shape
A true arch is covered with a fixed arched shutter panel or a sunburst fan, both custom made to a template rather than to measurements. An arch over a rectangular window is often best treated as two pieces: a fixed arch above and an operable blind or shade below.
Angled tops in a gable take a fixed shutter cut to the rake, or a shade on an angled headrail that lowers vertically. Transoms above doors take a fixed panel or a small shade. Corner windows are treated as two separate windows with the treatments meeting, since nothing sensible turns a corner.
- True arch: fixed arched shutter or sunburst fan
- Arch over a window: fixed above, operable below
- Angled gable: shutter cut to the rake or an angled-top shade
- Transom: fixed panel, rarely worth operating
- Corner: two treatments meeting, not one continuous unit
Why templates matter more than measurements
A curve cannot be specified by numbers alone. Fabricators work from a physical template made against the actual opening, because arches in real houses are rarely perfect arcs and the opening is rarely square to itself.
This is also why odd-shaped treatments have longer lead times and why they are not returnable. Anyone quoting a custom arch from measurements over the phone is likely to produce something that does not fit, and the cost of that falls somewhere.
The Middle Tennessee heat argument
West-facing gable and arched windows are often the largest unshaded glass in the house, and they sit high where the heat they admit collects. A room with a tall west window can be several degrees warmer than the rest of the floor through a Nashville afternoon.
That makes covering them a comfort and energy decision as well as a decorative one, and it changes what to choose. A cellular shade offers real insulating value where a shutter offers less, and exterior shading or a low-emissivity film addresses the heat before it enters at all.