Aspect
Which way is my house facing?
Short answer
Stand with your back against the front wall of the house, facing out, and read the bearing. That is the aspect. Outdoors, several metres from the wall, or the steel in it will spoil the reading.
Aspect comes up in estate listings, in planning applications, in feng shui and in the entirely practical question of which room gets the afternoon sun. It is a single compass bearing, but which bearing counts depends on what you are asking.
For a house, the convention is the direction the front elevation looks out. For a garden, it is the direction you face standing at the back of the house looking down the garden. For a single room, it is the direction its main window faces.
North-facing · 000°
Method
Step by step
In this order. Each step assumes the one before it is done.
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01
Do it outside, away from the wall
Modern walls contain reinforcement, lintels, wiring and pipes, all of which distort the magnetic field. Stand several metres clear of the building, and out of a car park if you can. A reading taken with the phone against the wall can easily be tens of degrees wrong.
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02
Face the way the building faces
Put your back parallel to the front elevation, looking out the way the front door does, and hold the phone flat. The bearing you read is the aspect. Take it three times, turning away and back in between, and use the middle value.
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03
Decide which north you want
For a property listing or a planning drawing, use true north: that is what a map and a site plan mean. For feng shui the tradition varies and practitioners differ, so pick one and state which you used.
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04
Read what the aspect actually means
In the northern hemisphere, a south-facing front gets sun on the front all day. East-facing gets the morning and is in shade by afternoon. West-facing is dim in the morning and bright and warm into the evening. North-facing gets no direct sun on that elevation, which is cool and even, and is why north light is what studios are built for. Everything reverses in the southern hemisphere.
Reference
The bearings
- North-facing
- 000° N
- No direct sun on that face in the northern hemisphere. Even, cool light.
- East-facing
- 090° E
- Morning sun, afternoon shade.
- South-facing
- 180° S
- Sun for most of the day in the northern hemisphere.
- West-facing
- 270° W
- Afternoon and evening sun, and the heat that comes with it.
How wrong can this be?
Accuracy
Aspect is normally quoted to the nearest of the eight principal points, so a few degrees of error does not matter. Standing too close to the building does, and that error can be large enough to change which point you land on.
Related
Other guides
The basic one
Which way is north?
If you are on a phone, press Start compass and turn until the bearing reads 000. If you are not, and the sun is up, stand with the sun on your right in the morning and you are facing roughly north.
No instrument
Without a compass
Put a stick upright in the ground, mark the tip of its shadow, wait fifteen minutes and mark it again. The line from the first mark to the second points roughly east.
Fixed installation
Aim a solar panel
In the northern hemisphere, face a fixed array due true south, 180 degrees. In the southern hemisphere, due true north, 000. Tilt it at roughly your latitude.