The “Two-Wall Rule” Has Changed the Way I Look at Any Apartment

When my husband and I were looking for apartments the last time we moved, way back in 2020, we weren’t able to tour apartments in person. Instead, we found an apartment we really liked online, and the broker visited the unit and FaceTimed us as she walked around the space one day after the sun had set. There was a checklist of things we liked about it — the size, the location, the south-facing windows in the front of the unit, the fact that it was on the second floor, and of course, the rent — so we took the plunge and signed the lease sight unseen. We needed to get out of our place ASAP (I joke that roaches were our third roommate).

The first time we saw our place in real life was when we got the keys from our future landlord one evening. The second time I went to visit the space (we had about a two-week overlap between our old lease and our new one), I stopped by to move some packages inside. It was my first time seeing the apartment on a sunny day, never mind in sunlight at all. 

The first thing I noticed in the apartment (besides the fact that it needed a professional clean before we moved in) was the sunlight coming in through the windows, all the way across the combined living and dining space. Our apartment is set up such that the deck/living room/dining area are all in a row. It’s a through-floor unit with south-facing windows.

So, already the unit gets a ton of sunlight in the front rooms in the morning. But the sun was coming in on every side — not just through those front windows. I stepped into the space more fully and noticed for sure that it was brighter than any apartment I had ever lived in, because the south-facing windows weren’t just in the front of the building. 

My apartment is technically a corner unit, though there’s only about a 10-foot gap between our building and the one next door, the width of a driveway. In the front space of our apartment, there are two walls of windows — the two south-facing ones in the front of the building, and the three windows along the side of the building, too. 

It made the space feel like a greenhouse. The sun was right in my eyes, at 2 p.m. on a winter afternoon. I put the packages down and locked up, more excited than ever to move out of our dark basement apartment. As soon as I got downstairs, I looked at my husband and said, “I think we’re really going to like this place.” 

When we finally moved in a few weeks later, that blast of winter sunlight was a balm during uncertain COVID times. It was a huge improvement on our basement apartment. But the space evolved over the next few months as I began to realize that the luck we had picking an apartment with the two walls of windows intersecting with one another — what I now call The Two-Wall Rule — also had an unexpected benefit of bringing in a ridiculous amount of cross-breeze. 

So not only, as the weather got warmer, were we able to have days of full sun in our apartment, but we were also able to have a beautiful warm breeze move through our apartment, made stronger because there were doors and windows on the two walls. 

I know that I purely lucked into this arrangement. Like I said, we never saw the unit during the day or even in person until we signed the lease. I also know I’ll be lucky if I ever find an apartment with the same window/wall arrangement ever again. We secured our lease at the right time in Brooklyn (December 2020) so the apartment we have now would probably be way out of our budget if we were looking today. 

But if we’re ever in a position again where we have to sign a lease quickly, or we’re unable to look at a potential apartment at the right time of day to know how sunny it may be, I’ll always remember a few things: south-facing windows, of course, but more importantly — the Two-Wall Rule. If windows are on two walls — especially abutting a corner — I know that I’ll probably have more sunlight and gorgeous fresh air compared with a railroaded building. You can take that to the bank!