Decorative
Curtains add color and life to any room in your house. They are used to pull together a room in the final stages of decorating and often will be an accent color that blends with the furnishings. Kitchens are an area where curtains are often used just for decoration. This is where you will find lighter weight curtains that are easily cleaned. Curtains can be grease catchers especially if you cook a lot with oils.
Privacy
Curtains provide privacy in bedrooms, living rooms, dens and anywhere in your home that you do not want the outside looking in. Heavily lined curtains provide the best source of privacy because they cannot be seen through.
Temperature Control
Thermal lined curtains are used to help retain heat in the winter and keep your room cooler in the summer. This also helps to reduce your heating and cooling costs. Some air within your home will leak out through windows and outside air will come in; the larger the windows are, the more air that leaks. Air also leaks through gaps around sides of your windows that have not been caulked. Thermal curtains greatly reduce the amount of indoor air that can leak out, and the amount of outdoor air that can come through.
Light Control
Heavy curtains allow you to control the amount of light that is emitted into a room, whether it is from sunlight, moonlight or outside lighting. People often close curtains at night to completely darken a room for sleeping; this also works great for people that must sleep during the day.
Soundproofing
Some rooms in your home can be extremely noisy. You can use thermal curtains to also help reduce noise. These curtains have a rating on them that will indicate the amount of noise that can be eliminated. A rating of 0.5 will reduce up to 50 percent of the noise in the room in which these curtains are hanging.