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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Homebuilding question: what direction does your house face?
We are trying to finalize our choice for a lot for our new home. The lot we like the best faces mainly south, but our main living space/windows would have northern exposure. I am a total sunshine nut and love the fact that my current home gets gorgeous sunlight filtering in from east and west. Do any of you have thoughts on this based on your current home? Thanks!
Re: Homebuilding question: what direction does your house face?
This was a big deal to us when choosing a lot, but in the end I think that it doesn't matter too much b/c there are pluses and minuses to both. Our house faces east, but the majority of the living space/windows face west. I love that we get so much light as the day progresses, and i also love that the rising sun doesn't wake our girls in the morning. That said, b/c we don't have a covered deck, it is pretty darn hot out on our deck in the summer when we'd like to be eating out there. When we finish out lower level/patio, we plan to put in a screen from the deck that will help a lot.
The one thing that I have heard many people say is that you don't want your house to face north b/c the driveway gets a lot of snow and ice built up on it (unless it is a sideload driveway of course).
Doing it again, we'd still build our house the direction it is, but we'd have put in a covered deck w/ a ceiling fan so we could take more advantage of the awesome setting sun in the summer.
Our house faces south, and we love that our drive will melt itself. Our across the street neighbors face north, and their drive is always frozen solid. Ick. Only bad thing is that our bedroom faces south, and gets a ton of light/heat, and our furnace thing is in our toy/living room with a huge picture window-south facing, and even if it's 20 below, if it's sunny, that room feels warm, thus the heater doesn't go on as high as it should and the rest of the house is frigid.
I would love a covered deck with a ceiling fan, we had that at our duplex, and I miss it a LOT!
When we built, the lot was almost more important for us than the house itself. We put a lot of time and effort into finding our lot - more because of space than anything.
Our home faces North (driveway) - I think the only time we haven't loved it is two winters ago when we got so much snow! That being said, I wouldn't change it. Although the winter can be tough, we have a lot of windows in the back of our house and the southern exposure is wonderful! Our heating bills have stayed much lower because of that and we have a ton of natural light. We don't get direct sunlight in the morning or evening so there isn't any problems with sleeping. I also don't notice any problems during the summer - we have a covered deck and eat outside all the time.
My only disclaimer to all of this is my DH is very "Type A" so he is very careful to clear all the snow/ice as often as possible and keeps up with it pretty well. Ultimately I really don't mind facing the North.
Our house faces the West, and we love it. Our last home faced the East, but our driveway was on the North. It was awful. Our driveway was never EVER clear, and we could never really enjoy being on our deck at nights, because it was so hot.
While we didn't build the house we just moved into, we were very particular about which direction it faced. Pretty sure we'll stick to facing the West.
We are building and I did NOT want sun coming into the family room windows directly. So our home is positioned so that the sun goes up in bedroom windows and down in bedroom windows but the middle of our home will not have direct light.
I don't like the added heating up of the house in summer (we have floor to ceiling windows through out) and I don't like the glare. I also don't like the damage that direct sun light causes to paint and furniture.