Privacy without closing the curtains: decide which views matter

Describe what privacy means to your household

I would ask each person to name one moment when they want to feel tucked away. It might be getting dressed, reading on the sofa or sitting outside after work. Someone else may enjoy seeing people pass along the street. Those preferences can sit comfortably in the same home if we give them specific places.

The Mitchell St Extension project description brings together more open shared living and separate private accommodation. That is a useful reminder that openness can be selective. For a new home, I would take the same question into the site layout: where do you want connection, and where do you want retreat?

Make a simple drawing of who can see what

On a copy of the site plan, mark the street, shared accessways, neighbouring windows and outdoor spaces. Use information you can establish from your property or public areas, and label anything uncertain. Add the positions where you expect to sit, stand or spend time in your proposed home.

Use one colour for views you value and another for views into those occupied places that concern you. Include the reverse direction: your new window might look straight into someone else's private space. Ask your designer to check the important lines in section as well as plan, particularly where sites slope or neighbouring floors sit at different heights.

• Which view matters from the sofa rather than the middle of the room?
• Could someone on a higher deck see over the proposed screen?
• Which neighbouring details still need to be confirmed?

Compare a few ways to keep the useful outlook

Auckland's Visual Privacy design guide recommends considering privacy early and offsetting windows to limit direct views between homes. It is non-statutory design guidance, rather than a substitute for checking the rules for your property.

For a hypothetical living room facing a neighbour's dining window, I would first test moving the opening along the wall or turning the room towards another outlook. Then I would compare a targeted screen with the view it removes. MBIE's exterior-design guidance identifies window design, screens and vegetation as ways to address neighbours' privacy.

Ask to see the view from inside each option. A drawing of an attractive exterior screen does not tell you whether you will enjoy looking through it.

Test the occasions when the solution changes

I would review the arrangement with curtains open and closed, and ask what happens after dark when the rooms are lit. If a blind is part of the answer, decide when you are happy to use it and what view you give up.

For planting, ask what provides privacy when you move in, what relies on growth and who will maintain it. Also ask the designer or planner how possible development next door could affect the arrangement. Record that uncertainty rather than treating today's empty section as a permanent view.

• Which parts of the privacy plan work without daily adjustment?
• What depends on planting outside your control?
• Have you discussed sound separately from visibility?

Take one awkward view to the design meeting

Choose the sightline that worries you most and ask the team to compare two responses while showing the outlook each retains. I would rather resolve that particular concern than make the whole house more enclosed.

If you would like help working through it, bring a site plan and a few photographs taken from your own property to a conversation. We can discuss where to start.