pictures always seem to make things seem lighter than they are, even the close up ones. Curtains are beautiful, fabric is soft and heavy, has a liner, well sewed, just very brown. Some of the reviews indicated that the backing was not quite white and had a gray tone to it but to me it's very brown and a lot darker than even I expected from the reviews and the pictures. It's like one of those search and find games, where once you finally see the hidden thI got, Then you go back and you look again it's so ibvious. Well it's like that, now that I have the curtains and I go back and look at the pictures and you can kind of tell it it's more dark than you want to think, but when you're just looking at the picture for the first time doesn't seem that dark.