Designing for the light you actually have

The first week of design is mostly spent watching. We map where the sun falls at different times of year, where the glare is, which rooms will never get direct light and which will get too much.

In Portugal the summer sun is high and hard, and the winter sun is low and long. A window that’s perfect in January bakes the room in July. The fix is rarely a bigger opening — it’s a deeper reveal, a shutter, a planted tree, or simply putting the window on a different wall.

Rooms want different light

Kitchens and workspaces do well with steady north light. Living rooms can take the drama of a west-facing afternoon. Bedrooms usually want gentle morning light and the ability to shut it out completely. We plan the floor around that before we think about walls.

Test it on site

Wherever possible we mark out key rooms on the ground and stand in them at different times of day. It’s low-tech and it catches things no model does.