How to Let More Light into Your Home Design the Pakistani Way By Shabnam Arab

Living in Pakistan, the summers are almost year-round and the heat is often unbearable. As soon as the month of June strikes, we tend to spend our days holed up indoors, closing the windows and curtains first thing in the morning, trying to avoid any traces of the sun. But sadly, just to escape the scorching heat, we most often deprive ourselves of the precious hours of daylight that are so abundantly available to us during the long summer days. This not only results in a much steeper electricity bill for the more artificial lighting we use instead but also leaves the inside of our homes dull and gloomy, resulting is general lethargy during the day.

Today, let’s talk about some ways you can design your home to let in more light, but without the accompanying heat.

1) Courtyards

The simplest and most effective solution to bringing in more light into your homes. By incorporating a courtyard into your design, you can make sure that every room in your house has access to daylight, allowing for rooms that have windows on more than one wall. Courtyards also act as natural ventilators by collecting hot air from the ground and expelling it upwards by the use of stack effect, thus naturally cooling the house.

While the homes of our grandparents were designed around courtyards, people started opting for them less and less after the advent of modern heating and cooling systems. There is also a misconception that courtyard houses can only be built when you have a larger area of land, but modern courtyard houses have been built on plots as small as 5 marlas.

2) Clerestory Windows

Clerestory windows –a fancier term for the ‘Roshan dan’. Like courtyards, clerestory windows were a staple in the homes of our ancestors and yet feel into disuse for much the same reasons. Clerestories are windows located at the top of the wall, starting just below the ceiling and ending before the lintel level. Because of their location, clerestories allow sunlight to penetrate much deeper into the room. They also naturally cool the room by expelling the hot air that rises from the ground and collects at the ceiling level. Since clerestories let light penetrate deeper into the room, in Pakistan it is advisable to reduce the vertical height of the clerestory but increase its width to avoid overheating. Clerestories also provide the added benefit of privacy. We often have to keep our curtains shut for privacy but since clerestories exist at a height above our heads, there is a much lesser concern for uninvited eyes and a lesser need for curtains blocking our sunlight during the day.

3) Glass Blocks

Glass blocks are a much friendlier version of the frosted window. Easily available and installable, glass blocks protect your privacy while still reflecting natural light into your room. Installed in opening of any size, glass blocks make a statement all by themselves and are a fun aesthetic choice.

4) Incorporate Solar Shading Into Your Window Design

We are often forced to close the curtains during the day because the excess amount of direct sunlight heats up the room in a matter of minutes. Instead of closing off the curtains entirely, we need to regulate the amount of sun coming indoors, and this can be done by incorporating shading devices into your window design. Hundreds of different shading devices are available in the market today, and these can also be customized to fit the aesthetic of your façade, from fun patterned screens to automatic louvres.

5) Light Shelves

A kind of solar shading, a light shelf installed into your window creates an intermediate reflecting surface that allows daylight to penetrate deeper into your room. The light shelf reflects sunlight towards the ceiling, from where it is redirected to the rest of the room. Not only does this prevent glare on working surfaces, but it also allows you to keep your window open all day long, but with less solar heating as less direct sunlight reaches the floor.

6) Shiny Surfaces

A classic trick to increasing the effects of daylight into your room is by using shiny surfaces. By using reflective tiles and counters, you can easily make your kitchen and bathroom appear brighter even if the intended room only has a small window. Reflective surfaces redirect light around the room instead of absorbing it, thus increasing the effects of daylight. The same is true for light coloured and glossy paints. White walls always reflect the most amount of light, so the next time you’re picking out a paint colour, make sure that room with the smallest window has white walls or a decorative mirror!