Dormers smack of home, hominess. The light up in the window, kids peeking out, a big family home… a natural extension of the roof.

I didn’t say homeliness!

Yet so many dormers are despicable …. usually too small, misshapen, oddly spaced, and more like a carbuncle.

How do you do this?

Let the main hinge come from the peak of the house, not a few feet from the peak.

Give the dormer some sides, not look like an armless body…

Let the sides float down to the first windowpane, like eyelashes to the eye.

But most off all…make them big enough to DO/BE something on that 2^nd floor, not the size of a urinal stall, but wide enough for a bathtub, or a desk, or a window seat, with lamps and space to BE.

This is the trick… a dormer must work both inside and out…. It is a fatal design error to have one side ok and the other side goofy. No one want goofy.