How To Screw Up A Home: Window Placement

When building or remodeling a home it is important to consider window placement from the interior first.  This is where many subdivision homes or remodeling projects can go terribly wrong.  Someone decides to line windows up all nice and neat on the outside, completely ignoring what happens on the interior and people are left scratching their heads.  It becomes a game of where to put the furniture, walls which shouldn’t hold artwork and window treatments which never look right. To make it right by changing the windows or applying tint to them, this page is the one you should visit.

Warning: by reading further you are indulging me in a slightly bitchy soap-box moment. 🙂  But I dare you to disagree.

Looks great on the outside but notice how this cuts up the room on the inside. It is even more prevalent in new construction.

So where did we go wrong?

Likely with the homogenization of homes in the late 1940’s.  Get it up, get it in, add lots of windows, call it a home – right next to 100 others which look exactly the same.  It became a habit, and dare I say while guys have a great appreciation and understanding of symmetry, when it comes to houses they’ve taken it way too far.  The windows do not have to all line up or be the same!

(Can we scream this any louder?  Or maybe I should make some bumper stickers.)

Proof can be found by visiting earlier styles of architecture to see how they treated window placement.According to double glazing Glasgow, while this shingle style home is fairly boxy in shape what gives it interest is the windows.  They are not all the same and they employ a very clever trick, gang windows together.  This allows more light to shine into the interior.This Victorian version of the shingle style employs the same brilliance of windows crewe placement. Group windows together to make a single large one!Frank Lloyd Wright understood window placement. Case Study House #9 by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen illustrates the purpose of windows which many seem to have forgotten. The purpose of a window is to allow light into a space, to enhance the interior.  The view may or may not be a consideration, but the real reason for windows is for light, not because they look good on the outside of a building.  You’ll get a much happier and more usable interior by planning the windows from the inside out.

Photos: 1-3 Zillow, 4 About.com, 5-6 Me, and 7 Daily Icon