Tyler & Sash Offers Custom Window Treatments with a Designer Twist

The windows of this elegant breakfast nook have a Roman treatment made of hand printed natural fabric with a raw silk decorative banding. A light lining adds to the ethereal look.

Pleated style drapes made of glazed linen hang on a custom painted traversing rod. The hand-painted rod is an exact match for the other trim-work in the room creating a seamless look.

Cheerful polka-dotted pleated drapes have a child-friendly cord-drawn system.

This dining room is outfitted with Roman shades that have a rich-look thanks to a dark black-out lining and elegant decorative tape.

Window treatments for this master bedroom were designed with the idea of maximizing natural light and accentuating the room’s height.

The relaxed look of these Roman shades results from selecting fabric with a soft drape and creating the shade without the standard top rod.

Here drapes and shades are coordinated with matching fabric and decorative tape which contributes to the serene look of this master bedroom.

The soft folds of Parisian-style pleats add a feminine touch to a sleek dining room.

This master bedroom is all about mixing textures. Grass cloth wallcovering and soft textured linen Roman shades create a luxurious backdrop.

Shaun Tyler Burgess isn’t necessarily what you’d expect from the owner of a custom window treatment shop, especially in a small suburban Boston town.

For one, he’s relatively young. That’s not to say that an interest in window treatments is limited to those of a certain age, but like a lot of handicraft and trade-work, his career path isn’t an overly popular one with younger generations.

“I’m definitely one of the youngest people doing window treatments,” says Burgess, who has owned Tyler & Sash in Winchester for just under a year. “The industry is going the way of upholstery and woodworking in that true custom workrooms are a dying breed.”

Burgess also possesses a worldly air and keen eye for design that seem to stretch beyond his shop’s locale, and for good reason. Prior to opening Tyler & Sash, he spent three years abroad working for Ralph Lauren in Madrid in a creative role that helped him hone his styling skills.

It’s precisely these unexpected qualities about Burgess that seem to have made his nascent business an instant success: he’s reinvigorating the window treatment market with a welcome passion, energy, and style. In the ten months that he’s owned Tyler & Sash, he’s cultivated a loyal client base of designers and homeowners both young and old, including decades-long proprietors of his shop in its former life as A & R Home Decorating (Burgess purchased the store from its former owners who retired), along with some of the area’s most notable up-and-coming designers (including 2017 New England Home 5 Under 40 Winner Nina Farmer).

Besides Burgess himself, what draws his clients in is the shop’s approach to window treatments, which puts style at the forefront. “The way we go about offering our services is through taking a design centric approach to them, and our strength is definitely with fabric. We’re really trying to affect people’s space in a decorative way,” explains Burgess. While you’ll find the standard range of blinds, shades and shutters in Tyler & Sash (“We can even make standard wood blinds look good,” Burgess promises), the storefront also houses hundreds of fabric swatches from brands like Zoffany, Harlequin, Duralee, Kravet, Thibaut, Anna French, and Galbraith & Paul.

He sees his job as putting the finishing touch on space, or as he explains it, “I think of window treatments as the master coming in with the paintbrush at the end. Often times you have the base of the furniture and art and rugs, and one of the hardest things to do is tie it all together.”

While he’s happy to help homeowners and end-users choose everything from fabrics, to hardware, to shades—literally the whole nine yards—he’s also keenly aware that his role with interior designers and architects might come more in the form of support. “I know how to play second-fiddle [to the designer],” he says with a laugh. “Not everybody can do that.”

The process is the same no matter whom he works with: it starts with a walk-through, followed by a detailed, estimate of his suggestions, “so there’s no surprise to the client,” he explains. Oftentimes, the first proposal is only the beginning. “They’ll say they don’t like this, or they want something in a different color, and we work on it until it’s just right.”

While perfection can take a little longer than “good enough,” the extra effort is well worth it to Burgess. “Window treatments offer the best opportunity to fuse the architecture of the home, the furniture, and the decor together,” he says. “They draw all of the different parts of the space into a whole.”

It’s just one more mindset that’s turning his small shop into a big hit with the design community.

Content Sponsored by:

Tyler & Sash
Winchester, Massachusetts
(781) 729-6639
tylerandsash.com

All interior design by Nina Farmer Interiors.