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Off centered windows

Lisa Kocsis
last month

We are building a home and our architect is placing windows in our water closet and bedroom off center. I am having a hard time with the look. Any advice?

Comments (7)

  • ffpalms
    last month

    I assume your architect is placing the windows for the best look on the exterior. Are you asking how to decorate the interior with off center windows? Can you post the floor plan?

  • PRO
    PPF.
    last month
    last modified: last month


    Any advice?

    Talk to your architect.



  • chispa
    last month

    Two of my master bedroom windows are off center to the whole room, but are centered on the bed. The sliding door is off center to the room and the bed, because we wanted enough wall space for a TV. Lots of reasons to place windows off center.

    Can't comment on your issue, because you didn't show what you are seeing.

  • PRO
    Mark Bischak, Architect
    last month

    Show floor plan and exterior elevations will be very helpful.

  • palimpsest
    last month

    Actually, thinking back, I have never lived in a house where the windows were exactly centered in most rooms in the house because that would have put the windows in odd locations on the outside of the house because not every room was the same size. This includes two houses built in the 1830s in which symmetry was extremely important.

    But I have never lived in a house built after about 50 years ago. All of the houses had simple ordered facades with a regular window arrangement. The house I live in now has a fully symmetrical facade front and back. The house is almost like a cartoon. That said, because rooms have closets, and there's a fireplace, and it's a row house...that puts all the windows off center inside.

    My sister lived in a house where every single room had a window centered in each room or "space" because it was sort of open plan on the first floor. But this did some odd things to the windows on the outside. Her house was built in the 2000s. If you look at the plans of bigger houses designed in this century every single room may have a window or windows centered on the room and that can put them all over the place on the outside, and this is compensated for by doing a bunch of bumpouts or different materials or gables or bits and pieces on the outside to conceal this. But look at the backs of some of these houses, if they don't continue those details on that facade. Window acne.

    The windows should make some sort of sense on both the inside and the outside, if possible, but that does not always mean centered. I know someone whose bedrooms all have centered windows, and in the secondary bedrooms, there isn't a decent wall to put a bed on in some of the rooms because the bed is going to overlap one of the centered windows on one of the exterior walls somewhere.

    So as has been mentioned I think you need to discuss with the architect why these windows are not centered inside, and there may be a really good reason.

  • dan1888
    last month

    Tell him to move them to the spot you'll be happy with. You have to live with them. if you want opinions on how they look, post something to review.

  • PRO
    Mark Bischak, Architect
    last month

    A frequent generic conversation:


    Owner: Change the design to this.

    Architect: If that changes then this will happen.

    Owner: Oh, I didn't think of that.

    Architect: That is why I am here.

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