Rooms that face north

North light is steady. It never falls directly into a room in the northern hemisphere, so it changes little through the day. Painters wanted it for that, and so do I.

This farmhouse was moved to a museum park sixty years ago, timber by timber. The paper windows were renewed but the frames are original, and so is the way they spread the light across the floor.

Dark timber

The posts and beams are almost black with smoke from two centuries of hearth fires. Against them the paper glows, and the room needs nothing else.