Product Data for Curtains and Drapes: Dimensions and Hanging
A curtain isn't a single value — it's a bundle of dimensions and hanging attributes. Where suppliers deliver them inconsistently, and how to model the attribute groups so the product is actually configurable.
- ✓Curtains and drapes are a measurement-and-hanging problem: height, width, heading type, transparency and fabric decide whether a product is even configurable.
- ✓Suppliers deliver these attributes inconsistently — width x height reversed, fabric width vs. finished size, free-text heading types — and by-the-metre goods clash with fixed ready-made sizes.
- ✓Standards (GTIN, ETIM, eCl@ss) identify and roughly classify the article, but rarely carry the deep hanging-and-dimension layer.
- ✓Productbay models the measurement and hanging attribute groups in one catalog and uses AI to parse them out of supplier Excel and PDFs — so a curtain becomes buyable.
A curtain looks like a simple product until you try to put it in a shop. Then it turns out that a single article is really a bundle of measurements and hanging decisions: how tall, how wide, how it hangs, how much light it lets through, what fabric it's made of, and whether you buy it as a fixed size or by the running metre. Get one of those attributes wrong or missing, and the customer can't configure the product — so they don't buy it.
Product data for curtains and drapes is a measurement-and-hanging problem: height, width, heading type, transparency and fabric decide whether the product is even configurable. This is a sub-topic of the broader home-textiles product-data challenge, where the same tension — soft, dimension-driven articles versus a shop that needs controlled values — shows up across bedding, towels and rugs too.
What makes curtain product data so difficult?
The core issue is that a curtain is defined by a group of attributes, and every supplier records that group differently:
- Dimension order: one supplier lists width x height, the next height x width. Get the axes crossed and a 140x245 curtain becomes a 245x140 — a different product entirely.
- Fabric width vs. finished width: the width before pleating is not the width the customer sees on the rail. Some feeds give one, some the other, some both without labelling which.
- Heading type as free text: eyelet, pencil pleat, tape, hook — controlled values that should drive a filter, but usually arrive as prose in the title or a notes field.
- Transparency: sheer, semi-transparent, blackout — a decisive buying criterion, almost never a clean, standardised field.
- Fixed size vs. by the metre: ready-made drapes and running-metre fabric are two different pricing and attribute logics, often mixed in the same supplier Excel.
Feed those raw fields straight into a shop and the customer can neither filter nor configure. The fix is the same as everywhere in multi-supplier retail: consolidate, normalize, enrich and publish — but here the hard part is the dimension-and-hanging layer specifically.
Which standards apply to curtains — and where do they stop?
Curtains sit inside home textiles, so the usual identifiers and classifications apply at the top level — and then thin out fast where the real attributes live:
| Data layer | What the standard delivers | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| Article identity | GTIN/EAN identifies the SKU | Says nothing about dimensions or hanging |
| Classification | ETIM / eCl@ss home-textile branches place the article | No heading type, transparency or metre logic |
| Core dimensions | Sometimes a width/height field for the branded core | Fabric-width vs. finished-width ambiguity remains |
| Hanging attributes | Not the job of a classification | Eyelet/pleat/tape/hook stay free-text |
| Care & compliance | Care and fire-resistance labels on the datasheet | Rarely a structured, filterable field |
So the standards identify and roughly classify a curtain, but the layer that actually decides whether the product is buyable — the measurement and hanging attributes — is almost always yours to build by hand.
How does Productbay help with curtain product data?
The throughline is a three-step job, and the trick for curtains is modelling the measurement and hanging attributes as proper attribute groups — that's exactly what Productbay is built for:
- Consolidate: import every source once — supplier Excel, CSV, PDF datasheet, feed URL, FTP, API — and match by SKU or GTIN/EAN so existing products update and new ones are created. Fixed-size drapes and by-the-metre fabric land in one catalog.
- Enrich: AI parses width, height and heading type out of titles and datasheets, normalises transparency into controlled values, writes descriptions, assigns categories and translates via DeepL — always with a review queue before anything publishes. Attribute groups make width x height, heading type and transparency consistent across suppliers.
- Publish: two-way sync to Shopify and Shopware, ERP connections (Xentral, weclapp), and feed exports for Amazon, OTTO and Kaufland — each with per-channel transformations, so a configurable curtain stays configurable in every channel.
Productbay is built for specialist retailers running multi-supplier, multi-channel catalogs. For the full picture across bedding, towels and rugs, see the home-textiles overview, and for the mechanics of turning messy supplier files into clean data, the guide on enriching and normalizing multi-supplier data.