How to Deal with Privacy & Overlooking Planning Rules When Designing Your Home

Getting Your House Design, Layout & Levels Right to Prevent Overlooking

Dealing with potential overlooking starts with how you position your new house on the plot. Be sensitive to levels, as a raised view towards your neighbours is always going to be hard to mitigate. Lowering floor slabs and ceiling heights can help to prevent elevated views. In extreme cases, a bungalow may be the only way to develop the site without causing unacceptable overlooking. 

“Creating an upside-down house layout with the living areas, where you’ll spend most of your time and are likely to feature the most windows, on the first floor can be a great solution for maintaining privacy against overlooking in a plot close to public spaces at ground level,” says Andy Ramus, director of AR Design Studio.

First-time self builders Chris & Mary Noon created a stunning oak frame home in Dorset, with an upside-down layout helping to capture the unbeatable sea views. The project went on to win the coveted, reader-voted Best Self Build Project at the 2024 Build It Awards. Photo: Richard Downer

“The elevated angle avoids people being able to look up and into your rooms. Looking down on those areas that you want to avoid is often more beneficial that looking directly at them. Getting your floor level right can be the difference between looking out over your ideal view and having to wake up to an unwanted sight each morning.”

Leave as much space as you can from sensitively positioned windows and consider how the shape of your house can be configured to avoid siting new windows where they might cause overlooking. If your windows have to be facing towards neighbours (particularly on the first floor) can you design a layout in which it doesn’t matter if these rooms don’t have a good view of the outside? For instance, obscured glazing wouldn’t be an issue in bathrooms, hallways or landings.

Designed by Ashworth Parkes Architects, this replacement home in the countryside features horizontal aluminium brises soleil over the floor- to-ceiling glazing. Photo: Michele Rossi

New balconies or roof terraces needs particular care – privacy screens can prevent views, but need to be an integral part of the design rather than an afterthought tacked on when a problem surfaces.

Where your house would back on to another, a separation distance of around 21m between rear windows is generally considered an adequate distance for windows to avoid overlooking neighbours – although councils’ design guides might set out a different figure. Note that such rule of thumb guidelines tend to be aimed at the development of whole new estates rather than the situation where a house is being set amongst existing properties.

What Do You Need to Know About Windows Overlooking Neighbours?

If overlooking is likely from your windows, obscured glazing (such as frosted glass), non- or limited-opening units can provide solutions. This is fine in spaces like bathrooms, but isn’t ideal everywhere, for instance as a main bedroom window. The council will assume that a future occupier of your house would want some sort of outlook from their bedroom, and seek to remove the obscured glazing.

That said, if your bedroom had a principal window facing to the rear and another towards the neighbours at the side, then obscured glazing of the smaller one should be considered acceptable.

To provide shading on their project’s large south-facing windows, the Pelmears fitted double-height, moveable larch louvre shutters that can slide from side-to-side on metal tracks. The shutters also act as privacy screen when the couple require it. Photo: Camilla Reynolds

An alternative is to go for high level windows in rooms where you want daylight, but an outlook isn’t essential. Rooflights can give plenty of natural illumination, along with an outlook of sky and potentially tree tops, but they’ll avoid creating a view down into your neighbour’s garden.

Different council’s attitudes to high level bedroom windows varies, with some resisting on the basis they don’t afford the occupier sufficient amenity, even though they protect the neighbours.

Consider Landscaping, Fences & Bunds as a Solution to Overlooking

Overlooking can sometimes be mitigated by planning planting or fencing into your landscaping design scheme. At ground floor level, a 2m-high close-board fence along a flank boundary is likely to eliminate the potential for overlooking between ground floor windows, and a well-kept hedge could have the same effect.

Although be aware that this could also cause loss of light or outlook to your neighbours, so take other ‘residential amenity’ issues into account. It’s sometimes possible to mitigate higher level overlooking issues by means of tall hedges or tree planting, but such measures take a long time to prove effective, plus coverage varies between the summer and winter.

“Planting trees or hedges is an easy solution to incorporate at the end of a project once you’re able to stand in the finished space and easily identify any areas than need additional privacy solutions. Landscaping can act as an effective screen without ruining a view or preventing daylight and air flow from reaching your interiors,” says Andy.

Chris Desyllas brought Snug Architects on board to design a replacement dwelling that would not only look nicer, but also improve the previous property’s overlooking issues. All the windows at the side of this house feature obscured glass and are much less intrusive than those on the original property. At the back of the dwelling, fixed louvres help to prevent overlooking. Photo: Richard Gadsby

Councils probably won’t favour total reliance on trees or hedges as a means to eliminate overlooking, but they can still be helpful as part of a range of measures. Fast growing Leylandii conifers can produce an effective screen in a few years once settled, but planners tend not to like them due to past problems with such hedges getting out of control.

The same goes for earth bunds (banks) – although effective as screens they have a tendency to dry out and not support planted trees or shrubs. A low bund might be acceptable as a means to give new planting a bit of a leg up in providing a screen quickly.

“A well-designed, high-quality fence or flank wall made from a material that complements and adds to your overall design can be a positive solution and provide a great backdrop with multiple functions,” says Andy. “On occasion, an etched glass balcony can be the right choice and options like slatted wood over glazing can also enhance the visual interest and character of your building while providing increased privacy.”

How Will Planning Politics & Developing Good Relationships Help?

Fostering good relationships with your neighbours is a helpful part of any planning process and avoiding objections from them will certainly help to boost the prospects for your application.

But don’t rely on having your neighbours prepared to write to the council saying they don’t mind being overlooked – planning officers take a more objective view and consider if any future occupier of the house in question would be happy.

If the impact on privacy wasn’t great, and the issues in the planning application finely balanced, then the support of your neighbours could help to tip the decision in your
favour. Likewise, any relatively minor overlooking issues could be blown out of all proportion if your neighbours strongly object – particularly if they have friends at the council.