What does a complete window treatment budget look like for a 3-bedroom Manhattan apartment?

A three-bedroom Manhattan apartment is our most common whole-home project. The total budget runs $18,000 to $55,000 for a fully treated apartment — all-in, including fabric, fabrication, hardware, and installation. Where you land in that range depends on four things: whether the building is prewar or new construction, how many windows are in the primary living spaces, whether you're motorizing, and which fabrics you choose. Here's exactly how a typical 3BR breaks down room by room.

Room-by-room budget breakdown

These are real numbers from Manhattan 3BR projects we've completed. We're giving you ranges, not quotes — your actual numbers depend on your specific windows, ceiling heights, and selections. But this is where most projects land.

Primary bedroom (2–4 windows): $3,500–$9,000. This is usually the room where clients spend the most per window. Motorized blackout shades on an east-facing bedroom are one of the highest-ROI investments in the apartment — the kind of thing you notice every morning. A classic combination: motorized Somfy blackout roller behind a soft linen roman or drapery panel. That layered look is how you get a bedroom that photographs beautifully and also blocks light completely.

Living room (3–6 windows, often with a view): $5,000–$18,000. The living room is where the view is and where guests sit. Floor-to-ceiling treatments in a new construction 3BR with large glass panels push toward the top of that range. Prewar buildings with narrower, taller windows sit toward the bottom. Solar shades for daytime glare control are common here; drapery panels add warmth and scale to the room.

Bedrooms 2 and 3 (2–3 windows each): $2,500–$7,000 total. Secondary bedrooms are usually simpler. Clients typically do custom roller shades or romans in these rooms, without motorization — unless one is a dedicated home office or a guest room that gets heavy use. Clean, quality work in a coordinated fabric that fits the palette of the apartment.

Kitchen and dining area (1–3 windows): $1,200–$4,000. Smaller windows, simpler treatments. Flat roman shades in an easy-clean fabric are the standard move. The kitchen is also where clients are most likely to skip custom work and use something off-the-shelf — and where it shows the most, because the proportions of a custom-made shade versus a cut-to-size store shade are visible from across the room.

The range on a 3BR project is wide because Manhattan 3BRs are genuinely different from each other. A 3BR in a 1920s prewar on the Upper West Side and a 3BR in a new construction tower in Hudson Yards are completely different rooms with completely different window configurations. We price every project from a measurement visit — we don't quote over the phone because the room decides the number.

— Glamour Decorating, from 30 years of NYC installs

What pushes the budget higher in Manhattan specifically

Ceiling height is the biggest variable. Prewar buildings in the West Village, the Upper East Side, Carnegie Hill, and Riverside Drive commonly have 9.5 to 11-foot ceilings. Every foot of ceiling height adds fabric — and in a room with four windows, that adds up to a meaningful cost difference versus a new construction building with 9-foot ceilings. Floor-to-ceiling treatments on a prewar window are simply taller, heavier, and more expensive to fabricate.

Building access affects installation cost. Buildings with strict delivery windows, elevator hold reservations, or freight-only requirements add logistics time. We work in buildings across Manhattan every week — we know the ones with the complicated protocols, and we build that into our project planning.

View exposure affects what you need. A 3BR in a south-facing corner unit with Hudson River views gets significantly more direct sun than a north-facing apartment with a courtyard view. The south-facing apartment usually needs motorized solar shades in the living room for daytime glare control — that's $800–$1,800 per window you might not need in a north-facing apartment.

How most clients sequence the spend

The most common pattern on a 3BR project: clients treat the primary bedroom and living room first, then add the rest within 6–12 months. We design the whole-apartment fabric and color story in the first consultation so nothing looks mismatched when the second phase arrives. The Somfy system, if they're motorizing, is expandable — every shade added later connects to the same remote and the same app without starting over.

Some clients treat everything at once. This is the cleaner approach aesthetically — every room comes together at the same time, the fabric coordination is exact, and installation happens in a single day rather than two separate visits. For clients who just bought and are doing a full move-in, all-at-once is almost always the right call.

Some clients start with the primary bedroom only. If the project budget is genuinely constrained, the bedroom is the right first move — it's the room where window treatments affect your quality of life the most directly, and a great bedroom treatment can serve as the anchor for the rest of the apartment's palette.

We've designed hundreds of 3BR apartments in phases. The key is getting the color story and fabric direction right in the first visit so nothing looks like an afterthought when the second phase goes in.

— Glamour Decorating, from 30 years of NYC installs

Where to spend more — and where it doesn't matter

Spend more on: the primary bedroom (you're in it every morning — the quality of light and the feel of the room are worth it), the living room (it's the first room guests see and the room where the view is), and any room with east or west sun exposure where you're going to need blackout or precise light control.

Spend less on: secondary bedrooms that don't get daily use, service areas, and any window in a room where the treatment is purely functional. A simple custom roller shade in a quality fabric is a completely respectable choice for a bedroom that gets used three times a year.

Don't skip the kitchen entirely. A Roman shade made to the exact width and length of your window — in a fabric that matches the palette you've built in the rest of the apartment — reads completely differently than anything you can buy off a store shelf. The investment is modest. The difference in how the space feels is not.