North or East facing?

[notquitenormal]

If you were forced to choose.

We have a SW facing garden at the moment, and we love it for evening sun, but where we're looking to move there are only N and E facings houses available.

At the moment we have two prospects. Same size, similar layout, same price.

One (bit dated, slightly bigger extension & bigger driveway) has a north facing garden, the other (fully updated, but a bit bland) east facing garden.

I'm sick of looking at houses. Starting to think I'll just give up and just stay where I am.

Why are you moving? Are the new houses bigger?

If forced to move, I would probably chose the north facing. I had a north facing garden in the previous house and the garden was still warm and sunny in the summer and the front of the house (sitting room and master bedroom for us) was lovely and warm in the winter.

Much bigger, yeah, much nicer area too. All the houses on the south/west sides are big detatched jobbies that are way out of our league

I would choose north facing because you can expect to see a tiny bit of sunset in summer time coming from west side. In general, north facing garden wouldn't put me off as I am not a big sun lover, and skin cancer getting harsher these days, a shadow is an advantage.

Hmmm, north then. We're doing a second viewing in the evening, so I suspect this will seal the deal.

Funnily enough I'm not a sun lover either and we have a gazebo up for shade during most of the summer, but we do get the benefit of longer evening later in the year. It's more DH's problem than mine.

I'm not a sun lover so don't want to sit out and bake. I had a north facing garden at my last house - if you plant it really lushly to work with the shade, it will still be gorgeous and, as others say, you still get a surprising amount of (gentle) evening sun unless it is titchy.

East. At least you get the morning sun.

If you choose North - could you bear to have a kitchen and back reception room with no direct sunlight all day?

I have a house with a north-facing kitchen, garden and study.

We have to keep the lights on all day, and all year round at the back of the house.

The gloom makes me feel desperately depressed in winter, and is the main reason why we're planning to move.

Indeed. It's more of house issue than a garden one.

Having had a large house with a north facing back garden, a house with an east facing garden and 2 houses with SW facing back gardens I would never have another north or east facing back garden. Personally I would stay put.

Depends where you live. When we were in the SE we had a fully south facing sun-trap garden and it was horrendously hot & parched in summer. Current house's garden is north east facing which means in the summer we get sun in the garden from about 11-4 (and kids frolic in the paddling pool) & we have a very large wrap-around garden room...no way would we have had this in the old house. More of a problem actually is low sun in the front of the house.

Well I have a house with west facing garden, it is too much of sun for me in the afternoon. Very personal thing imo.

Gnome, I'd love to but where I am now there's a guy who deals drugs out of his car most evenings and I have to lie about where I'm going whenever I want to get a taxi home of an evening.

If there's anything worse than gloom, that's it!

I'm sorry, my reply was flippant.

If you are around the house in the morning then east facing would be my thought. If you tend to be around the house in the afternoon then north facing might be better.

Oh, and as a parting shot, make sure the local police get the drug dealer's registration number (anonymously of course).

Ach, not flippant at all!

It's amazing how significant such things seem when you're spending a couple of hundred thousand on something. In context, I'm actually starting to think it's not such a big deal.