We walked nine streets in Barnsbury at four o’clock on nine February afternoons, which is the hour that decides whether a front room is somewhere you sit or somewhere you pass through. The results were not what we expected.

Orientation is not the whole story

Two of the three best streets face broadly the same way as two of the three worst. What separates them is what stands opposite: building height, tree species, and whether the plane trees on the far pavement were pollarded in the last three years. A well-cut plane lets February through. An uncut one does not.

Street width mattered more than we assumed and roof pitch mattered less. The single largest factor, on this evidence, was whether the house opposite was two storeys or three.

The order

We are not going to publish a ranking that changes what people pay for their neighbours’ houses. What we will say is that three of the nine had usable afternoon light in the front room in February, and that all three are streets where we have never had trouble selling anything.