North Facing House Plans: What It Really Means

When people say a house is north facing they usually mean the front of the house points north. That is the least useful reading of the phrase. The front of the house is where the garage and the entry are, and those rooms do not care much about the sun.

What matters is the living areas, the kitchen, dining and family rooms where you spend your day, and the outdoor living space you use with them. A genuinely north facing home puts both the living areas and the alfresco and yard on the northern side, with the glazing that lights them, so the low winter sun reaches the rooms and the space you actually use and warms them for free.

This is why the same floor plan can be brilliant or hopeless depending on the block. Flip it so the living areas face south and you have lost the whole benefit, even though the plan has not changed.

North is good for almost every room, so the aim is to get as many of them as you can onto the northern side. The living areas, the kitchen, dining and family rooms, are the ones you must not compromise, because that is where you spend your waking daylight hours, but they are the floor, not the ceiling. If the block has the frontage, put the bedrooms and even the wet rooms on the north too.

The size of the block decides how far you can take it. On a small block the living areas may be all you can point north, and that is perfectly fine, because that single move captures most of the benefit. On a larger or rural block you can do far better, so take advantage of it and face nearly the whole house north, keeping only the garage and a study deliberately out of the sun. Even the laundry and bathrooms are better on the north, where the sun helps them dry out and stay free of mould.

In Australia the sun sits in the northern half of the sky all year. In winter it tracks low across the north, so north facing windows let it pour in and heat the rooms behind them. In summer it climbs high overhead, so a normal roof overhang or eave shades those same windows and keeps the heat out.

No other orientation gives you both. East and west windows catch low morning and afternoon sun that is hard to shade and easy to overheat. South windows get almost no direct winter sun at all. North is the one direction where the sun works for you in every season.

Start with your block, not the plan. Work out which way your block faces, which really means which way the backyard and the living areas can open. Then look for a plan whose living areas land on the northern side once it is sitting on your block.

On Dudils every plan is already reviewed by an architect for exactly this, and each plan page shows the floor plan rotated so north is up, like Google Maps. That lets you see at a glance whether the living areas are on the sunny side before you ever contact the builder.

Almost everyone wants their main living areas to open onto the backyard, so they can see the kids and the outdoor space while they cook and relax. That single wish drives the whole floor plan, and it is why the direction your backyard faces matters so much.

A north facing backyard is the easiest block of all to build on, because the living areas face the yard and the north at the same time. They get the sun and the view together, with nothing to trade off. An east or west facing backyard is nearly as good, since the living areas still open to the yard and pick up plenty of light.

A south facing backyard is the hard one. On that block the north side is the front, where the driveway and garage sit, so the sunny north is taken up by car parking. Putting the living areas on the north then means turning them away from the backyard, which is the opposite of what most families want. Getting both north facing living and living that opens to the yard on a south facing block takes a plan drawn specifically for it.

That is exactly what Dudils sorts for. Tell us which way your block faces and we show the plans that make it work, with the better oriented ones ranked first, so the tricky south facing blocks are not a dead end.