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Best direction for a house to face ?

totalguitar
totalguitar Posts: 166 Forumite
in House buying, renting & selling
Whats the best direction for a house (say the front) to face ? I've heard a south facing rear garden is best. We currently live with a north facing back garden but will be moving to a east facing back garden. I'm not a gardener so i'm not worried about the garden but could the front facing west make the house darker than i'm used to. Anyone live in a house facing these directions ? (the living room/master bed at the front and kitchen to the rear)

Thanks

Comments

  • mandi
    mandi Posts: 11,932 Forumite
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker Stoptober Survivor
    A south facing rear garden will give you sunshine for your BBqs in the summer months...........something I just couldnt live without..........
  • virgin_moneysaver
    virgin_moneysaver Posts: 1,286 Forumite
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker
    we moved from a north-facing garden to a south-facing & what a difference, instead of losing all sun by 6pm in the summer we've had the best summer last year where we were still sitting out until sunset - it made a difference internally as well - because of the layout the main living room overlooked the garden & was out of the sun by 11am most mornings, this house has the french doors overlooking the garden & its wonderful, I actually want to spend time in the lounge whereas the old house I would avoid the lounge in the daytime as it was gloomy & depressing

    good luck with the move
  • nearlyrich
    nearlyrich Posts: 13,698 Forumite
    First Post First Anniversary Combo Breaker Hung up my suit!
    mandi wrote:
    A south facing rear garden will give you sunshine for your BBqs in the summer monthsQUOTE]

    Unless you live in a house like mine where the front garden is the south facing and private one where our BBQ lives from May till September;) .
    Free impartial debt advice from: National Debtline or Stepchange[/CENTER]
  • Doozergirl
    Doozergirl Posts: 33,802 Forumite
    Name Dropper Photogenic First Anniversary First Post
    totalguitar wrote:
    Anyone live in a house facing these directions ? (the living room/master bed at the front and kitchen to the rear)

    :dance: Me!

    I get the best of both worlds really. I have a big garden at the moment so the direction it faces doesn't matter so much. The dingy North side of my house is a public footpath, the back garden gets the morning sun and the front gets the afternoon sun so I can sit on my bed and watch the sunset over the village. In the summer, the front of the house is like a storage heater but the TV gets a bit obscured around Richard & Judy time because the sun hits it. ;).

    You can have a nice coffee on the patio on summer mornings which is really uplifting. If you want to drink Pimms into the evening, you'd need to put seating towards the back of the garden and some sort of privacy screen like trellis directly next to it to screen you from peeking neighbours' :D
    Everything that is supposed to be in heaven is already here on earth.
  • Poppy9
    Poppy9 Posts: 18,833 Forumite
    First Post First Anniversary Combo Breaker
    My rear garden faces South West. Makes the back of my house boiling in the summer. A conservatory is out of the question due to the heat. I love though being able to sit out in the evening watching the sun go down.
    :) ~Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.~:)
  • al_yrpal
    al_yrpal Posts: 339 Forumite
    South west facing at the rear is great. You get maximum evening sun. We have a conservatory. Until last year it was too hot in summer, but we got the triwall plastic roof renewed with 'solar' triwall. This has a silver appearance on the outside, and a white appearance on the inside. It acts as a heat barrier, reflecting the solar radiation away.

    Now, even on hot days we can now use the conservatory most of the time.
    Survivor of debt, redundancy, endowment scams, share crashes, sky-high inflation, lousy financial advice, and multiple house price booms. Comfortably retired after learning to back my own judgement.
    This is not advice - hopefully it's common sense..
  • NervousYetFeisty
    NervousYetFeisty Posts: 138 Forumite
    For us the direction the garden faces is very important and we've actually counted out two houses because the gardens faced the wrong way. The one we're going for has a south-west facing garden. Although I fancy a bit of horticulture, the main point (as has already been raised) is that we'll be able to sit out on the patio for hours of a summer's evening. Hopefully some voiles will help stop the sun getting in the way of the telly! And a parasol will offer a bit of shade outside if we need it.
    Basically, the other houses had patios that are in the shade in the evenings, which kind of defeats the object of having a patio if you're at work all day.
    Much depends though on the size and shape of the house and the garden. If you have a big garden you might be able to have a seating area at the end of it, away from the shade cast by the house. We considered this with one house, but counted it out because it wouldn't quite work and the patio would be very overlooked by neighbouring houses, even with screens and suchlike.
  • nelly_2
    nelly_2 Posts: 17,863 Forumite
    First Post Combo Breaker
    the best way for a house to face is facing the set of Baywatch :)
  • LumpyCustard_2
    LumpyCustard_2 Posts: 267 Forumite
    When I bought mine, I made sure to get a south-facing back garden, and it's lovely. Even in the winter the patio and kitchen are full of light. The only problem is the trees that are in the school field behind me - growing quite tall now.

    In the end, it depends where you are - if you're in the southern hemisphere, you'll be wanting a north-facing garden ;)
  • distilled
    distilled Posts: 176 Forumite
    West is best for the back garden. BBQ's after work and all that!
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