Adelaide climate design
How to Orient Your House on Your Specific Adelaide Block
Quick answer
To orient a house on an Adelaide block, put the main living areas on the north wall, put bedrooms and service rooms on the south wall, keep east and west walls small and shaded, and align the long axis of the plan roughly east-west. If the street is on the south, this is easy. If the street is on the north, the plan flips and the front rooms are the utility ones.
The right orientation for your home depends on your block, not on someone else's. Two blocks 50 metres apart can need completely different layouts if one faces north to the street and one faces south. This is how to work it out.
Public source: SAPPA: property planning atlasWatch: Homes By Homes podcast, episode 70
Orientation Tip: How to determine which side living areas should be on
The same 16-minute orientation tip, framed here as the starting point for placing a house on a block.
Section 1
Step 1: identify north on your block
Get the deposited plan from your title search or off SAPPA. Rotate it in your head or on the screen so the north arrow points up. Note which boundary is north (street or rear), which is south, and where east and west sit relative to your driveway and front door.
Section 2
Step 2: check street frontage
If the street is on the south of your block, north-facing living is easy: living areas face the rear yard. If the street is on the north, north-facing living means opening up to the street, which affects privacy. You either accept it, use tall front fencing, use narrow high windows to the street plus a north-facing courtyard, or design a U-shape with the courtyard inside.
Section 3
Step 3: check overshadowing
A two-storey home directly north of your block will shadow the north side of your block in winter. Look at what is already built to your north, and what the planning code allows for future builds on that block. This tells you how much genuine winter sun you can rely on.
Section 4
Step 4: check prevailing winds
In Adelaide the cool relief in summer often comes from the south-west (the "Gully wind") and from the south (sea breeze off Gulf St Vincent). Design so windows in living areas can open to catch this breeze on hot afternoons. Winter winds typically come from the north-west and are cold; you want less glass and better weather-sealing on that side.
Section 5
Step 5: layer in your priorities
View, privacy, morning sun into the kitchen, keeping the pool out of the wind, or hiding a neighbour's garage all matter. Rank them. A good designer will trade them against passive solar performance intelligently; a rushed floor-plan drop will not.
Section 6
What to hand your designer
The deposited plan with north marked. The SAPPA overlay list for your block. A short paragraph on which rooms you use when (mornings, evenings, weekends). Any specific view or privacy concerns. This turns "here is a stock design" into "here is a design for your block."
What to do next
Keep reading
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Learn moreThis is general climate-design guidance drawn from public sources including Your Home (yourhome.gov.au). It is not a specific engineering, thermal-performance, or solar-installation design. Always work with a qualified building designer, architect, or accredited solar installer to translate these principles into a design for your specific block.