Discover Windows / Daylight and How a Room Feels

North, South, and the Hemisphere Most Advice Forgets

In the southern hemisphere the generous side of the building is the one the northern books call cold.

A great deal of writing about daylight was produced in the northern hemisphere, where the sun tracks across the southern sky and a north facing opening receives no direct sun at all. That gives northern rooms facing north their famous cool, steady, shadowless light, prized by anyone working with colour, and it makes the southern side the warm one. Read that advice from Australia and every instinct it trains is precisely inverted, which is why so much borrowed guidance about orientation lands badly here.

In the southern hemisphere the sun crosses the northern sky. A north facing opening is the one that receives sun through the middle of the day and across the year, and it is generally the most useful orientation a living space can have. A south facing opening gets little or no direct sun and instead delivers even, unchanging light that barely shifts through the day. Neither is better. They are different instruments, and a room served by both has access to the full range.

The point is not to chase one orientation but to match the opening to what happens in the room. Steady and shadowless suits close work, colour judgement and anywhere a moving patch of glare would be a nuisance. Sun that arrives, travels and leaves suits a room where the day is meant to be felt. East and west, meanwhile, deliver low sun straight in at the beginning and end of the day, which is either the best thing about the room or the thing everyone complains about, depending entirely on what the room is for.