Here's why the pelmet needs to make a comeback

I’m on a personal crusade to bring back the pelmet. I’m not hopeful it will take, but I can’t give up.

Remember those narrow borders of wood, fitted across the top of a window to conceal the curtain fittings, widespread in the 1970s and declining in popularity ever since?

Wikipedia fleshes out its definition of pelmets by saying they, “help insulate the window by preventing convection currents”. To which I would add: “and are fantastically effective at blocking light”.

For those of us who love sleep, a fully darkened room is a thing of great beauty. In a room with a pelmet, there is no sneaky strip of light leaking into your room above the windows. There’s no gap at all where light might weasel its way in. Instead all you have is perfect pitch black. Followed by deep restful sleep.

Besides, the lines of a nice wooden pelmet are neat and inoffensive. They provide a blank canvas for the curtains to unfurl beneath.

I’ve recently been in the home-buying market. I had a long list of requirements for my new home – all-day sun, at least three bedrooms, an actual bath . . . Pelmets was a hopeful adjoinder at the bottom of the list. Alas, there were none. Apparently, homeowners who’ve bought houses with pelmets over the past 40 years have renovated them out of existence.

The poor pelmet even features in one online decor article entitled, “Outdated home trends that we hope never come back”, alongside nautical motifs and wallpaper borders.

I surveyed some discerning friends, just to see if I could get any traction with my pelmet renaissance movement.

Initial success: my workmate, in her 50s, said (somewhat apologetically) that she liked them. “I’m a cottage-y, older type of girl,” she said.

My 40-something friend, who lives in a five-year-old, ultra-modern (think: glass and concrete) house, said she couldn’t abide them. “Too fussy. Too 70s.”

For completeness, I asked my 17-year-old daughter, whose efforts at homemaking admittedly so far extend only to optimally positioning her full-length mirror and making sure there’s always somewhere she can plug in her mobile phone to charge.

“What is a pelmet?,” she said. “Did you say ‘helmet’?”

But when I explained to her their characteristics and light-blocking powers, she was keen: “Great idea. I need my sleep-ins.”

So there could be hope for a comeback after all. We may just have to wait a generation.

• This article originally appeared on stuff.co.nz