You can't look in it, you can't open it - why have it?

October 9, 2008 6:35 AM

What's with the INTERNAL bedroom windows?

It's something I'd never encountered until I moved to Europe, but in every house I've lived in here, there are little rectangular windows above the internal doors, between the top of the door frame and the ceiling. Why?

They aren't for ventilation, as they don't open.

They're not for checking up on what's going on in the room, because they're too high up and impractical for that.

They ARE really annoying, because it means you can never have the room as dark as you'd like. If a hall light is on, or it's bright elsewhere in the house, the light comes in the little window so the room is actually quite bright even with the lights out.

These windows are above the bedroom doors, above the door between the hallway and sitting room, and above the bathroom door. They creep me out for some reason.

So why are they so common? What purpose do they serve??

posted by InfinateJane to home & garden (13 comments total)

They bring natural light into circulation areas like hallways and landings that might not otherwise get any. That's all.
posted by jonathanbell at 6:42 AM on October 9, 2008

Those are called transom windows or just transoms, as in "this came in over the transom."

Especially in times before electricity and mechanical ventilation and AC were common and cheap, they were there to bring light and air into what would otherwise be dark and stuffy rooms. And many people like them.

But if the light bothers you, why not just put a piece of cardboard up there to block it?
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 6:48 AM on October 9, 2008

I've had these in houses I've lived in; as others have said, they allow a certain amount of light into windowless hallways. It's actually quite a useful feature as it means you don't need to use a hall light as much. And it makes it easier (at night) to see if someone's using the bathroom, or whether the kids have turned their light out yet.

And yes, line them with cardboard or foil if you don't like them. That's what I did when I was a kid - it stopped my parents noticing that I was up at 1am watching old Hammer films.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:55 AM on October 9, 2008

You'll find them in a lot of historic homes as well, especially in home built before electric lights were popular. They were also placed above large hallway doors in the interior to alleviate the cave like feeling. They are often called transom windows.
posted by stormygrey at 6:56 AM on October 9, 2008

It's also to do with house design. European townhouses tend to be narrow, deep and terraced meaning that all light comes in from the front and back. These are to get light to the middle, which as other posters have noted is usually the hallway.
posted by rhymer at 7:09 AM on October 9, 2008

It's also to do with house design. European townhouses tend to be narrow, deep and terraced meaning that all light comes in from the front and back.

My in-laws' house (in Japan) is like this: long and narrow, and flanked on both sides by similar houses, each about a foot away from the open window.

It always dark and gloomy in that house.
posted by KokuRyu at 7:14 AM on October 9, 2008

As a side note, you may see this in newer construction as well - many municipalities have rules that bedrooms must have some amount of "natural light", so bedrooms on interior walls or retrofitted into loft apartments sometimes have a transom-style window the length of the bedroom wall made of glass or glass block.
posted by true at 7:31 AM on October 9, 2008

I've also heard them called vasistas. My high school French teacher once told us this name for the windows originated from the German phrase for "what is that?" (I don't know German but I guess it would be something like "Was ist das?"). I think she said that the German troops occupying France during ww2 would ask "what is that" when they saw the little seemingly purposeless windows in French homes. I don't know if this is true, but this is what she told us.
posted by dm_nyc at 7:33 AM on October 9, 2008

I'll add that I have seen them in many older homes here in the US.
posted by mmascolino at 8:37 AM on October 9, 2008

Often, transoms can open so you can get air circulation into the room while keeping the door closed. Very useful in old houses without central air.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 9:24 AM on October 9, 2008

Thanks! :)

I actually do have pieces of foam core blocking them, but I was staring at it last night, wondering what the darn thing was doing there to begin with.

Growing up in a place where everyone has a detached house with lots of windows, it never occurred to me that you'd need an internal fix for light movement - heck, I want to PREVENT light movement!
posted by InfinateJane at 9:27 AM on October 9, 2008

You can reduce the amount of light using a banner.
posted by Akeem at 12:04 AM on October 10, 2008

We had them above every bedroom door in my house growing up, too. (It was a hundred-year-old German farmhouse.) They opened and closed as well-very handy in the winter, with lackluster heating.
posted by timoni at 12:18 AM on October 12, 2008