Drape Haus
Goan window design is easiest to understand as a set of layers. On the outside there is a frame set into a thick laterite wall, usually picked out in white stucco. Inside that sits the window itself: casements glazed with oyster shell or glass, or in older and plainer houses simply bars. Behind it, on the room side, many houses have timber shutters that close for security, storms and sleep. Each layer has its own job, and the job of anything you add, whether a curtain, a blind or a mosquito net, is to fit around them without getting in the way.
That is the practical problem most owners face. The windows are tall, the walls are deep and often fragile, the shutters must still swing, and the house needs to stay open for air through most of the year. A curtain that blocks a shutter, a net that stops a casement closing, or a heavy track screwed into soft stucco will make the window worse, not better.
This guide covers the window types you are likely to find in an old Goan house, how their proportions decide where hardware goes, how to fit nets to shutters that open in or out, when to add curtains or blinds and when to leave the window alone, and the yearly care a timber window needs in the monsoon. The panes themselves have their own article: our guide to oyster shell windows covers the carepa shell and how to look after it.
How the Goan window came to look the way it does
The old houses were not always outward-looking. Writing on Goan houses, drawing on the book Houses of Goa, describes pre-Portuguese homes as inward-looking with small windows, opening into courtyards and rarely onto the street. A Goan heritage writer quoted in Gomantak Times adds a detail owners still find in older walls: before the change, a street wall might have no windows at all, or openings with turned bars set right at the top or right at the bottom. Windows at eye level on the road front came later, with the outward-facing Catholic houses built or remodelled from the middle of the 18th century.
Once the windows faced the street, they became the face of the family. Large ornamental windows with stucco mouldings open onto the verandas of these houses, and the same writing traces the mouldings to Portuguese houses, where they helped sailors recognise their own homes from the sea. A study of Indo-Portuguese architecture in the International Journal of Scientific and Technology Research notes that in Goa, as in the Algarve, window and door surrounds were painted white and the corners of the facade picked out with pilaster strips.
Glazing came late. The same heritage writer says glass was expensive and only reached Goa in 1890, which is why translucent shell was set into timber battens instead. Shapes vary with period and taste: the Government of Goa describes the 19th-century Costa mansion in Loutolim as Indian in style, with low tiled roofs and wide verandas, but with Gothic-style windows. Hindu courtyard houses kept a different scale; a study from Government Polytechnic Panaji records sills and lintels in traditional rajangan houses set low, at about 60 to 85 cm, to suit a life lived close to the floor.
The window types you will meet in an old house
No two old houses are glazed the same way, and many have been altered several times, so it helps to walk round with a notebook and record each opening rather than assume. Look at four things for every window: how the opening is shaped at the top, what fills the casements, whether there are shutters and which way they swing, and what the frame is fixed into. Those four answers decide almost everything about how the window can be dressed.
The table sets out the arrangements most often found, and what each means for curtains, blinds and nets. A single house can hold all of them: shell on the street front, glass replaced at the back, barred openings in the kitchen and store, and a pointed-head window or two added in a later remodelling.
| Arrangement | What you see | What it means for curtains, blinds and nets |
|---|---|---|
| Shell-paned casements | Small milky panes in a timber lattice; no view through | Already diffuse light and give privacy. Usually best left uncovered by day. |
| Glazed casements (often replacing shell) | Clear or patterned glass in the old lattice | Glare and loss of privacy; a sheer often restores what the shell did. |
| Solid timber shutters on the room side | Panelled leaves that close over the casements | Hardware must sit clear of the shutter swing and of its folded-back position. |
| Barred openings, with or without shutters | Turned timber or iron bars; sometimes no glazing | Need nets most of all; curtains here are about rain and privacy, not light. |
| Arched or pointed-head windows | Round or Gothic heads, often with stucco around | Curtain from a straight line above the arch, or a shaped treatment; see our arched-window guide. |
| Low-sill windows in courtyard houses | Sills well below waist height, deep reveals | Sill-length treatments look wrong; floor length or an inside-reveal blind works better. |
Planning something like this?
We visit homes across North and South Goa, measure on site, and bring samples to see in your own light.
Tall proportions: where the rod goes and how long the drop must be
Old Goan windows are tall, and the rooms above them taller still. That proportion is the first thing to respect. A curtain that starts at the top of the casement and stops at the sill cuts the window in half visually and leaves a band of wall above that looks unfinished. In most front rooms the better line is to fix the pole or track well above the moulded surround, close to the ceiling or cornice, and let the curtain fall to the floor, so the whole architrave is framed rather than covered.
The second rule is stack-back. A pair of curtains drawn open takes up width at each side of the window, and on a tall old window with a moulded surround you want that bundle of fabric to rest on plain wall beside the frame, not over the stucco or the shell. That means a pole or track noticeably wider than the opening. Our curtain rod length simulator works out the extra width for a given fabric and fullness, and our curtain length guide covers floor, break and puddle lengths.
Third, think about the shutters. Shutters that fold back into the reveal need nothing in front of them; shutters that swing into the room need the curtain to hang far enough forward that the leaves can open fully behind it. Measure the shutter leaf width and the depth it projects when open before choosing brackets. In many old rooms the simplest answer is a ceiling-fixed track in front of everything, fixed into a joist or batten rather than into lime plaster. Our article on wooden ceilings in old houses explains how to find something solid to fix into.
Arched and pointed heads need a decision rather than a compromise. Either the curtain hangs from a straight line above the highest point of the arch, so the shape shows when the curtains are open, or a shaped heading follows the curve and stays fixed while the lower part ties back. The first suits most houses and keeps the stucco visible; the second is for rooms where the arch must be covered at night. Our guide to arched and odd-shaped windows goes through both.
Fix curtain hardware above and beside the moulded surround, never into it. Stucco mouldings are part of the facade's history and crumble when drilled.
Mosquito nets on shutters that open inward or outward
A Goan house is meant to be open, and it is open in the hours when mosquitoes are busy. The World Health Organization notes that the mosquitoes that spread dengue are active during the day and lists window screens among the protections it recommends, so a net is not only a night-time question. The difficulty in an old house is that the window already has two or three moving layers, and the net must not stop any of them working.
Start by working out what opens which way. Where the casements open outward and the shutters open inward, the net has to live in the gap between them: usually a frame fixed inside the reveal, behind the casements, with enough depth left for the shutters to close over it. Where casements also open inward, the net has to go on the outside face of the frame, which is harder to reach and to clean, or be built as a removable panel. Barred windows with no casements are the easiest; a net fixed in the reveal behind the bars works well.
There are three good ways to do it without harming the window. Sliding window nets run in a slim track in the reveal and suit wide openings with room to park the open panel. Pleated mosquito nets fold away to a narrow stack at one side, which helps where the reveal is shallow or the shutters fold back close to the glass. And a magnetic mosquito net frame can be lifted out completely, which is the gentlest choice for a protected or very decorative window. Whichever you choose, the fixings should go into the timber of the frame or a discreet new batten, not into the shell lattice or the stucco.
- Measure the reveal depth between casement and shutter before choosing a net type.
- Open and close every leaf with a cardboard template of the net frame in place.
- Keep the net clear of the sill so rainwater can still drain off it.
- Choose a fixing that can be removed later without leaving large holes in old timber.
Curtains, blinds or nothing: deciding window by window
The shutter is the original night curtain. Closed, it gives privacy, darkness and security; open, it disappears into the reveal or the wall. So the real question is what the room needs that the shutters do not give, and the answer differs by room. A front sala with shell panes may need nothing at all, or a pair of unlined linen curtains purely for softness and evening atmosphere. A bedroom that faces the morning sun and has glass instead of shell needs something to block light at dawn while the shutters are open for air.
Where curtains are wanted, keep them light and drawn fully clear by day. A plain linen curtain in a warm off-white sits naturally beside old timber and lime plaster. Where a window has lost its shell and been reglazed, a sheer curtain gives back the diffused light the shell used to give, and lets the shutters stay open on hot afternoons without the room being on show to the lane. For bedrooms, a lined or blackout curtain on a separate track in front of the sheer handles both day and night.
Blinds are trickier. A blind mounted inside the reveal often fouls the casements or the shutter swing, and a blind fixed over the outside of the frame hides the moulding. They work best on secondary windows with plain surrounds, or on the courtyard and verandah side of the house, where a bamboo or chik blind rolled up under the eaves is in keeping with the house. On the main facade, a curtain that pulls fully clear usually serves the window better.
| Room | Usual window | What usually works |
|---|---|---|
| Front sala | Tall shell or glass casements with shutters | Floor-length linen or cotton on a wide pole above the moulding; often unlined |
| Bedroom | Glass casements, shutters inside | Sheer for day, lined or blackout curtain for night on a double track |
| Dining room | Glass or shell, often onto a verandah | Sheer or nothing; chik outside on the verandah side if the sun is low |
| Courtyard-facing rooms | Low sills, deep reveals | Floor-length light curtains, or blinds inside the reveal where shutters allow |
| Kitchen and store | Barred openings | Nets first; a washable cotton curtain for rain and privacy if needed |
Monsoon swelling, flaking paint and loose hinges: yearly care
Timber windows in Goa have a hard life. The India Meteorological Department records that about 91% of the state's rain falls in the southwest monsoon, which usually sets in during the first week of June and withdraws by the third week of September, and that from June to August the winds are mostly westerly to south-westerly. In practice, the windows on the west and south-west walls take the driving rain, and they are the ones to check first.
The US National Park Service's Preservation Brief on repairing historic wooden windows is a useful reference here, even though it was written for a different climate. It names moisture as the primary cause of decay, and points out that paint failure is a map of where water is getting in: blistering, cracking and peeling paint marks the joints and surfaces that stay wet. Decay usually begins on horizontal surfaces and at joints, especially the sill and the joints between sill and frame. The sill should slope away from the house, and a small drip groove cut under it helps water fall clear rather than run back into the wall.
The same brief describes a simple test for soft timber: push a sharp awl into the wood. Sound wood lifts in long splinters; decayed wood comes up in short, crumbly pieces, and a probe pushed straight in can go through a sound-looking skin into rot behind. It also sorts repairs into three levels, from routine maintenance through structural stabilisation to replacing individual parts, which is a helpful way to brief a carpenter: most old windows need the first level, some need the second, and few need a whole new window.
Shutters and casements that stick in July are not necessarily broken. Conservation advice from the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, written about doors, says seasonal binding from humidity-driven swelling should simply be tolerated; planing a leaf in the wettest month leaves a gap once it dries out. Ease them in the dry season if they still bind, re-fix loose hinges into sound timber, and leave painting until after the rains, when the wood has dried. Termites in frames are a separate problem, covered in our guide to termites and timber.
Paint windows after the monsoon, not before it. Wood painted wet traps moisture under the new coat.
Matching fabrics to painted shutters and window frames
Colour is where curtains most often fight an old window. Goan window frames are often painted strongly: deep greens, blues and reds against a coloured wall, with white surrounds. One essay on Goa's architecture in the journal Question of Cities notes that because shell panes are a soft white, the wooden frames around them were painted in bright or deep colours to make them stand out. A curtain that tries to match that colour exactly almost never succeeds, because fabric and gloss paint reflect light differently.
It works better to choose one role for the fabric. Either it recedes, in a warm white, ivory or natural linen that sits with the white surrounds and lets the painted frame be the colour, or it picks up the wall colour a few shades lighter, so the window reads as part of the wall when the curtains are drawn. Avoid a bright optical white next to old lime plaster and shell, which can look blue and harsh beside them. Our guide to choosing curtain colour explains how to judge colour in the room rather than under shop lights.
West-facing front rooms need one more thought. Strong late-afternoon sun fades unlined fabric quickly, especially deep colours. A lining protects the face fabric, and a pale curtain shows fading far less than a dark one. Our guide to fading and sun damage covers fabric choices for the sunniest walls.
