Bringing Sunshine into North Carolina’s Homes
Our homes are too dark; can we design brighter ones?
If you’ve ever walked into an apartment that felt dark and gloomy, even on a sunny day, you’ve already experienced how deeply natural light affects our mood and well-being. Daylight doesn’t just make a space look good; it changes how we feel in it. The soft glow of morning light, the golden wash of afternoon sun; these are things that make a home feel alive. Yet, as more people move into cities and new housing options like condos and mid-rise apartments become the norm, one crucial question often gets overlooked: are we still getting enough sunlight in our homes?
It turns out, not all housing types are created equal when it comes to daylight. Between townhomes, condos, and single-stair apartment buildings, some designs naturally support better lighting and air quality than others. As cities across the U.S. face growing housing demands, understanding which housing types best bring in natural light isn’t just an architectural curiosity, it’s a matter of everyday comfort and health.
This piece was written by student fellows in collaboration with Single Stair NC. Each semester, CITYBUILDER provides fellowship opportunities for aspiring student urbanists in the Triangle. This semester we’re focused on single-stair apartments. Single Stair NC is a new publication committed to advancing the pursuit of single-stair buildings in North Carolina. Read more in our series:
Why Daylight Matters
We all know plants need sunlight to grow, but so do we. Sunlight helps regulate our circadian rhythms, supports Vitamin D production, boosts mood, and strengthens our immune systems. Natural light helps reduce eye strain and can even cut down on electricity bills by reducing the need for artificial lighting during the day.
So, what exactly makes good daylighting?
In design terms, good daylighting means sunlight that fills a space evenly without glare, penetrates deeply into rooms, and provides visual comfort throughout the day. Corner windows, for example, offer some of the best daylighting because sunlight can enter from multiple angles as it moves across the sky. For everyday life, that translates to something simple: walking into your living room at noon and not needing to flip a switch. Standing at the kitchen sink with a view of the trees outside. Feeling warmth and connection to the outdoors even while indoors. These are subtle but powerful qualities that shape how “livable” a home feels.
Why do so many apartments feel dark and stuffy?
If you’ve ever rented a studio apartment or lived in a condo where your kitchen sits in the center of the unit (far from any windows) you’ve probably noticed how quickly you start to crave natural light. Unfortunately, with our current building code, this subpar layout is difficult to avoid when designing a spatially-efficient, high density apartment complex.
Most American building codes require every bedroom to have a window, which means that bedrooms typically occupy the limited wall space that faces the outdoors. Living rooms, kitchens, and other common areas often get pushed toward the interior of the unit, away from sunlight, because they are not required to have an exterior window by code.
This design approach, though efficient on paper, can make daily life feel dim and disconnected. Artificial lighting fills the gap, but it can’t replicate the warmth and energy of natural light.
So, how do we design housing that brings sunlight deeper into our homes? Let’s look at how daylighting compares across three common housing types in growing neighborhoods: condos, townhomes, and single-stair apartment buildings.
Daylighting in Different Housing Types
Condos: Density Over Daylight
Condos often aim to balance density and comfort, but when it comes to daylight, they almost always fall short. Many condos are designed with shared exterior corridors or staircases for access. These hallways, though convenient, block sunlight from reaching the rooms that border them.
Because only two of the four exterior walls typically face outdoors, condos tend to have limited opportunities for natural light. Bedrooms might get some morning or afternoon sun, but living spaces usually rely on artificial light for most of the day. The coveted unit type in a condo building is often the “corner units”, which have two perpendicular walls with windows, allowing daylight to shine in throughout the day. Unfortunately, there are only so many corners in a building, and a large percentage of the units still have just a single wall with windows.
That said, newer condo developments sometimes compensate with large windows or angled façades, but these features come at a premium cost.
Townhomes: A Brighter Middle Ground
Townhomes provide a more balanced relationship with daylight. Each unit usually has its own front and back exterior walls, meaning residents can have windows on at least two sides. This allows for cross-lighting (and cross-ventilation), which improves both comfort and air quality.
End units in townhome rows are especially desirable. They have three exterior walls, which means more corner windows and sunlight throughout the day. It’s no surprise that these homes sell or rent the quickest.
However, not every townhome can be an end unit. To make the most of valuable land in cities, most developments have multiple middle units that only get light from the front and back. While still better than most condos, middle townhomes can feel dimmer in larger floor plans or on narrow lots.
Single-Stair Apartment Buildings: The Best of Both Worlds
Enter the single-stair apartment, a housing type that’s gaining attention for how efficiently it balances density, daylight, and livability.
Instead of long double-loaded corridors (a hallway down the center with apartments on both sides), single-stair buildings use one staircase to serve up to four units per floor. Because there are fewer units packed around shared hallways, each one can have two to three exterior-facing walls.
Seattle, Washington has pioneered a strong case for single-stair housing, and recently legalized buildings up to 6 stories to have one means of egress, with other safety precautions. Many of the buildings on infill lots designed under this new law have beautiful daylighting and a large amount of windows throughout the building. Take Sola16, a single-stair apartment building on the lot of a single-family home. The structure consists of eight two-bedroom apartments, each sized for a family to be comfortable. Even on a cloudy day, living rooms have access to ample natural illumination.
The higher “perimeter-to-area ratio” of single-stair buildings, as explained in our previous article, is what gives single-stair apartments their superpower: abundant natural light. Bedrooms, kitchens, and living rooms in every unit can have windows, something that’s nearly impossible in typical corridor-style apartments.
The result? Homes that feel open, airy, and bright all day long. Families can have enough bedrooms without sacrificing daylight in their living spaces.
A Hidden Bonus: Better Ventilation
Sunlight isn’t the only thing that improves with additional exterior walls; airflow does too. Natural ventilation can make a home feel cooler, fresher, and more connected to the outdoors. It’s especially useful on warm but not scorching days, when opening a few windows can replace the need for air conditioning altogether.
Homes that allow for cross-ventilation (air entering from one side and exiting through another) tend to stay comfortable longer and recover faster after heatwaves or power outages. This ventilation also reduces the feeling of “stuffiness” and can improve the quality of indoor air, which has health benefits, especially for those with respiratory ailments.
Single-stair buildings, with their multiple exposure points, are naturally designed for this. As we’ve seen, condos and corridor apartments often only have windows on one side, creating stagnant indoor air and forcing reliance on mechanical ventilation.
Orientation: Why Direction Matters
You don’t need to be an architect to understand the massive impact of building orientation. Whether your windows face north, south, east, or west drastically alters how much sunlight you receive, and when:
South-facing windows get the most consistent light throughout the day.
East-facing windows capture gentle morning light; perfect for bedrooms.
West-facing windows bring dramatic sunsets but can cause overheating in summer.
North-facing windows provide soft, indirect light; ideal for studios or offices.
Single-stair apartments are inherently more flexible when it comes to orientation. Because they’re smaller and don’t rely on long hallways, they can be arranged on a site to take advantage of the best sun angles and prevailing breezes. By contrast, larger double-corridor apartment buildings are often locked into a single orientation dictated by their footprint, sacrificing sunlight for efficiency.
How Architects Bring More Light In
Good daylighting isn’t always obvious when you’re apartment hunting, but architects think about it constantly. From the angle of the building to the width of the window frames, dozens of design decisions influence how light moves through a space.
Here are a few strategies designers use to improve daylighting across different housing types:
Setbacks and angled façades in condos allow more windows to face the sun.
Courtyard layouts in townhome communities bring light into interior spaces.
Skylights and light wells draw sunlight deep into central rooms.
Single-stair layouts, when allowed by building codes, ensure that every unit has multiple exposures and natural ventilation.
Each of these strategies reflects a growing recognition that light isn’t just an aesthetic feature, it factors into residents’ quality-of-life.
Light as a Livability Standard
The quality of daylight is one of those things that homebuyers rarely think about until after they’ve moved in. It’s easy to focus on square footage, finishes, or rent price, but a poorly lit home can quietly wear on your well-being.
As architects and developers push for smarter, more sustainable housing solutions, daylighting is becoming a core part of the conversation. Single-stair housing offers one of the most effective ways to bring natural light and air into every home, without sacrificing density or affordability.
Good daylighting shouldn’t be a luxury reserved for single-family houses. It’s a livability standard that should be accessible to everyone, from young professionals renting their first apartment to families looking for a long-term home. Single-stair apartments offer the opportunity to make daylighting more accessible and affordable to prospective residents, so why not make it possible for our future homes to be a little brighter?
If you’re shopping for a new place to live, take a moment to stand by the window. Notice how the light moves across the room. Ask yourself: does this home let the sun in?
Julie Powers is a Bachelor of Architecture Student at NC State University, with a LAEP minor. Additional graphic and illustration support was provided by NC State Undergraduate College of Design in Architecture major Brenna Belcher.
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|