We have a similar problem with the bedroom we've chosen to sleep in being on the wrong side of the house from a morning light point of view. Unfortunately, we've still not sorted out decent curtains despite having been in the house 18 months; the ones in the bedroom are a pair that were in the house when we moved in. They're a sort of light blue colour with fluffy clouds on, have been used as dustsheets and are a bit paper-thin :-/

Any recommendations for where to get curtains? Preferably nice purple ones :-) We had a look at John Lewis and got a rough quote which caused us to go 'eek!'

I got mine from one of the shops on the Beehive Centre, although I'd have to go home and hunt through the depths of my receipts archive to tell you which shop (let me know if you actually want me to do this). I think they were fairly expensive, but on the other hand they're extremely good, and they've served me very well in three different bedrooms so far.

Go see my Mummy - http://www.villagefabrics.co.uk - we do a range of Curtain Express Curtains, and sell blackout lining (grr - should at some stage add that to the website), - your best bet is to phone the shop 01491 204100 and ask - though it can be a bit difficult to describe curtains over the 'phone! It's been a while since I've been in the shop so I wouldn't be surprised if there's more curtaining things I don't know about.

Our prices tend to be competitive when compared with John Lewis - but it all depends upon the size of curtain you need - Curtain Express curtains get expensive when you need more than one width of fabric - IIRC. You probably want to make your curtains a bit bigger than the window to prevent reduce the light coming round the edges.