You can do a wide variety of treatments - just use an inside mount.

Besides the inside mount, you could also just be sure and pick lacy or sheer treatments. The lace curtains in the picture came with the house and I've decided I like them because they decorate the window and provide some daytime privacy without completely hiding the windows. You'll notice the curtains on the back wall are hung below the top piece of window trim, to further show it off. The shades are nice for nighttime.

Here is a link that might be useful: Curtains

Trust me, when my house was new 84 years ago, no one was worried about showing off the trim. It was there and you screwed rods into it and hung drapes. I know, cause my house came with the original rods. Maybe even the original drapes... (giggle)

our home is an older home also. The woodwork is quite simple, but I too like it to show. I have mounted most of the window coverings inside and also use light weight/sheer materials.
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Yep, I agree with you homemaker. Window casings weren't really taken into consideration when dressing windows 100 years ago. Personally, I love drapes, but I like everything about fabric and can never have enough of it...LOL

That being said, I have 2 different treatments in my living room. This first one is a side window where there was no room to have the swing arm rods. It's very traditional:

The second are the front facing windows in this room. You can buy different kinds of swing arm rods. I know that Restoration Hardware and Pottery Barn have carried them in the past, but mine came from eBay. There's usually a bunch of the antique ones on there. You need lots of floor space in order to open and close the drapes/curtains, but they do preserve the look of the casings:

Mary lu when you say mount on the inside, explain exactly what that means. Are the on tension rods? It's difficult ot see the specifics from your photo's. By the way the windows are absolutely gorgeous and is what I had in mind.

The swing arm is also an option that I didn't think about.

Thanks everyone for your responses.

Inside mount means mounting the curtain rods to the casting inside the frame. You can do it a variety of ways depending on the design of your windows.
Using a tension rod for the lace panels is the easiest way.
Heavier curtains you can use a method much like that which you'd find in your closet for a rod or you can add a piece of wood and put your brackets on that or you can mount your hardware very close to the the moulding closest to the window opening.
In a old house experimentation is often the key to success.
I've used with some success Blue Tack...the stuff teens love to hang poster on walls with ,to try out different hardware postions. It comes in a square scored into long retangles..to activate it you roll it in a ball. you can find it in most office supply departments.
Anyway a bit of that on the back of your hardware to try out different postions is often enough to give you an idea if it will work for you or not. The advantage to using it to try out your hardware is you aren't drilling into your wood work all over the place...keeps thing from looking like Woody Wood Pecker has been there.

as a previous poster suggested, I just used tension rods (spring loaded) within the window frame to hold the curtains. Usually just the small round ones, however if the curtain is a little heavier, I used the 2" flat ones, as in the picture below.
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hope this helps.

That swing-arm treatment is brilliant. I need to look into that.

I have a 1930s English cottagy-type house with 4" wide window casings that are in great shape. The first thing I did was to sand and paint them glossy white, so they stand out. Then I used inside mounted 2" natural cherry wood blinds, stained, not painted. During the day, the blinds are raised and "stacked" at the top of the window. At night, the blinds are lowered and closed. The darkness of the cherry wood causes the blinds to visually disappear, which, in turn, focuses attention on the wood trim.

An added benefit of wood blinds is that they help keep the draft that old windows are prone to at bay.

But, I really, REALLY like those swing arm drapes. I might have to rethink that for my formal rooms.

Like I said, you need some floor space in front of the windows,....AND don't forget to get pretty substantial rods or lightweight curtains. I HATE the tabs that I have on there, and they are definitely too heavy for those particular rods. (They drag them down quite a bit) Both PB and RH have a larger diameter rod, I believe. I would definitely use a rod pocket type curtain or drapery the next time around.

All in all, they're a fairly successful execution.

When we first bought our Craftsman bungalow I spent a lot of time reading magazines and catalogues from the period, in particular Gustav Stickley's "The Craftsman." I discovered that curtains were generally hung inside the window during this period, showcasing the woodwork. I also found old marks in the unpainted woodwork indicating that this had been done in years past. So that's what I did. Simple, made most of the curtains myself.

Nice photos, everyone!

I use tension rods too.

We have gorgeous oak woodwork in our house! I like to use minimal window coverings. I primarily use inside mount and plain/lightweight fabric so the windows/woodwork show well.

Here's a covering for the bevelled window in a door:

Here is a picture of the simple curtains in the living room:

My window sills are eighteen inches deep, so that allows me plenty of room to mount any window treatments inside, instead of on the outside of the sills. Really old homes, IOW pre-victorian often did not have the lovely large windows, nor lots of them since they were heated only by fireplaces. I needed and wanted all the light I could get. We live in the country, so privacy wasn't a pressing issue. I only wanted to really block the view at nights.

My solution to that was to go to bell or balloon valances, under which a wide slatted venetian blind could be pulled up and completely hidden during the day. In the bath, I went with an English cotton lace valance and plantation shutters on the lower part. The views are too good to block, even with lace sheers.

We just finished painting our sitting room and I did different curtains. Thought this would give you another idea.

Simple "flat" valance that I sewed myself and sheers.
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