By Feargus O'Sullivan
Among the many lasting effects of pandemic-era lockdowns for apartment dwellers is an expanded appreciation for balconies. While these private outdoor spaces may have once been a nice-to-have, they are becoming a required feature for an increasing number of buyers and renters. A UK survey from June 2020 found that, just four months into the pandemic, 14 per cent of British home-hunters felt that the experience of lockdown had made having a balcony more important.
In some places, planning guidelines are even changing to reflect how much they can improve a home. Since 2020, guidance from the London Mayor’s office has recommended a minimum of 5 square meters (54 square feet) of outside space for every one- or two-bedroom apartment, with an extra square meter added for every extra bedroom beyond that.
In the absence of such explicit guidelines, the term “balcony” can indicate a broad array of outdoor space types — so broad, in fact that the term alone can only vaguely express what you’re actually getting. If you search online for homes listed as having balconies in the average British or American city, you’re quite likely to find included in that category both homes with lush, spacious outdoor terraces big enough to host a party on, and ones with narrow little ledges with a few dying geraniums and barely enough space to fit a cat litter tray (not that many people would trust their cat on a balcony).
In some countries such as Germany and Italy, where urban apartment dwelling has been largely the rule across classes for centuries, there is a wider range of terminology in everyday use, expressing the variety of uses for these outdoor spaces — depending on climate, need and circumstance.
Below is a primer on the types of balconies you may find, the origins of their design and what they’re best used for.
When most people think of a balcony, it’s probably one of these: a projecting platform enclosed to above-waist height by walls or railings. If you’re hankering for a little sunny open space, then sun balconies are probably the brightest, simplest way of providing it.
But once a building goes above, say, five or six floors, sun balconies can start to induce vertigo. The degree of privacy they offer also impacts how much they are used. Look up at a building where sun balconies are ringed by railings or balustrades rather than a solid wall or opaque glass, and you’ll typically see that many residents have part-blocked their balcony from view, sometimes with a fringe of bamboo screening.
Their exposure can also limit them — they don’t always work well in windy or rainy locations, even if an awning or a balcony above can offer a little protection, and they can be too hot and sun-exposed for parts of the day in summer. In fact, a study published in 2022 on the Polish city of Wrocław found that north-facing balconies were used more regularly than south-facing ones, where light and heat became too intense more quickly during the summer months. This exposure also has its advantages, however. Outside North America, many people use their balconies most frequently for drying laundry — a process that’s more effective with greater exposure to light and wind.
Sun balconies tend to be most common in cities where long periods of the year have short or overcast days. Scandinavian cities such as Stockholm and Copenhagen are full of them, especially in 20th century housing designed with an eye to giving working people healthier living conditions.
If balconies were belly buttons, then one constructed loggia-style would be an “innie” when compared to an “outie” sun balcony. Recessed into the façade rather than jutting out of a building, a loggia-style balcony is essentially a sort of room where a wall has been removed to expose the space to the open air.
These semi-sheltered spaces have some obvious advantages. On the upper floors of taller buildings, loggias are less likely make you feel exposed and dizzy and can shelter you from vertical (if not diagonal) rainfall. They can also feel more like natural extensions of apartments. At the same time, they can prevent some light entering the main body of an apartment that a sun balcony would not obstruct. They are also not necessarily a great favorite of developers, because they occupy potentially valuable interior floor space.
Street-facing loggia-style balconies are a staple of older tenement buildings in Berlin and other German cities, where the term “loggia,” which once meant a covered, colonnaded gallery, came to refer to these balconies. They are relatively rare in the US but do feature in some taller American buildings, such as New York’s Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed Park Loggia, as more secure, less gusty alternatives to the sun balcony. Chris Cooper, Design Partner at SOM, notes that loggias are satisfying “in-between spaces” that straddle the divide between inside and out. “It feels like a room, but one that has outside air, where you can grow plants on because there’s enough sunlight, so you feel both at home and that you’re in a natural outdoor setting.”
People living in cooler climes where light is at a premium tend to think of balconies as places to catch a little sun and air without leaving home. In many places where heat can be punishing, however, balconies are designed to allow people to enjoy a cooling breeze while catching as little sun as possible. Balconies in India, for example, were traditionally screened by an elaborate perforated latticework known as a jali. In the Middle East, a similarly elegant intricate screen is known as a mashrabiya. With climate change, they are also making something of a comeback. While you might not find the sort of intricate screen traditional in the Middle East, it’s becoming increasingly common in places such as Australia to hedge in a balcony with some louvers, especially if the balcony is on a busy street where users might otherwise feel overly exposed to passers-by.
There is a tendency to associate this type of balcony with cultures that particularly value seclusion — screens could allow women to observe the street without being under the eyes of other people — but they are in fact common in many places where airiness is at more of a premium than light. So while you will find them across India (including in new buildings) and in Middle Eastern cities such as Jeddah, they are also a famous feature of Valletta, Malta and — reflecting the important Islamic influence on the architecture of Spain and its colonies — in the Peruvian capital, Lima, where the streets of the historic center are lined with so many latticed balconies on the upper floors that they almost appear to be secondary streets themselves.
Don’t confuse these with the American screened-in porch: They won’t provide bug protection unless you fit the inside of the lattice with netting.
These tiny little jutting platforms can be a bête noire for people looking for homes with balconies on the internet. They turn up in searches for balconied apartments but are basically railings in front of a big window, with enough space for a flower pot outside if you’re lucky.
Often intended primarily to ornament a façade — by providing a space for lacey ironwork and potted plants — these little additions are nonetheless unfairly belittled. Their true function is not actually to provide outside space, but to create a barrier that allows residents to open a floor-to-ceiling window without the risk of anyone or anything falling out of it. As such, they can make part of a room feel balcony-like, especially if you flank the opening with plants. If you’re determined to get the feel of outside space in your home, grouping big leafy plants around a window of this type can do the trick. And while adding a proper balcony to a building can be expensive and complex, Juliet balconies can usually be added to a façade without planning permission.
The name refers to the balcony where Juliet is approached by Romeo while taking in the night air in Shakespeare’s play, (although the structure in Verona visited by tourists as “Juliet’s balcony” is actually a full-blown sun balcony). Perhaps the best place to find real Juliets is the boulevards of Paris, where little Juliet balconies (called “French balconies” in several languages) are one of the features that makes the city’s limestone tenements so delightful. Venice, meanwhile, specializes in a version that could be called a semi-Juliet — a balustraded platform outside a window just deep enough to put your feet on, but too narrow to count as an actual outside space.
Gallery balconies are single platforms that run the width of a building so that each apartment gets access to the same structure. These can either be broken up into private spaces using screens or left communal — often primarily as an access route, such as in London’s interwar LCC flats, or the Casa di Ringhiera tenements of late 19th century Milan.
When these balconies are fitted with awnings — as they invariably are in Greek cities, where they are standard for almost all post WWII apartments — they also have the advantage of creating unbroken lines of shade all around a building, contributing more to its coolness than a line of separated sub-balconies. When left without barriers that separate them into private spaces, galleries can be a place to interact with neighbors — but they also lack the privacy many are seeking in a balcony. If the building is accessible without keys from the street, they can also pose a security risk as secluded places to lurk, something that has led many galleries in UK public housing (referred to locally as “deck access”) to be broken up with barriers.
While the main forms of balcony are discussed above, there are also several structures that are so balcony-like in their function that they deserve an honorable mention.
Winter gardens are increasingly found in new apartment complexes globally. Derived from the German term wintergarten — which means either a conservatory or a bow window deep enough to sit in — this structure is a sunroom that’s partly separated from the rest of an apartment, typically by sliding doors.
Effectively loggia-style “innie” balconies enclosed with glass at the front, these spaces are increasingly popular because they get more use in the colder months, provide a buffer space between interior and exterior and, crucially for developers, can be included as part of the apartment’s floor space. On the downside, they aren’t really outside spaces, so you can’t necessarily get a full blast of fresh air (or have somewhere to banish smokers). Perhaps the best-known examples are in a London development called Neo Bankside where residents fought to close a viewing gallery from the adjacent Tate Modern that provided views into their winter gardens — a fight they ultimately won.
Next up is the altan, a space on top of a projecting porch. Common in villas in continental Europe and in London’s grander Victorian townhouses, the name is derived from the Italian altana (“high one”), perhaps due to their frequency in Venetian architecture. Exposed and small, altans are not classic balconies, perhaps because, as the accessible roof of a porch, their use as outside space is often something of an afterthought — in some British examples, you can access them not through a proper door but through climbing out of a window. The sheer pressure on urban space is nonetheless seeing altans pressed into greater use as outside space — chairs and tables are starting to appear, for example, on London’s porchtop balconies, in spaces that until recently would have little more than a small potted tree.
Finally, there are fire escapes, which provide useable outdoor space across many parts of urban America. They were intended solely to get people out of buildings in an emergency and are supposed to be kept clear of obstructions like furniture. But many fire escapes have always — with varying degrees of landlord tolerance — also been used as places to grab some air, watch the street below or maybe even stow a little barbecue. In some cities like Chicago, they can be even more spacious than many actual balconies.
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