When my friend and her husband first moved into a new-build Brooklyn mid-rise in 2022, the apartment’s floor-to-ceiling windows had been a big selling point. Who doesn’t love natural light? But after living there for a while, it became clear that having big windows was actually kind of a pain.
First, it was impossible to find off-the-rack curtains — everything that fit was either extremely expensive or custom. Then there was the fact that despite their size, the windows only opened a tiny crack, making a decent breeze nearly impossible. Opening them also presented other issues: “They have no screens,” she says. “Lots of bugs get in.” Now that she’s looking to move, she’s finding that even more apartments have the same window problems — giant, unopenable, impossible to find a screen for or curtains that fit. She found herself asking, Where have all the normal windows gone?
