A balcony for the monsoon

There is a particular hour in a Bengaluru monsoon, around four in the afternoon, when the light goes silver, the rain arrives sideways across the treetops and the whole city smells of wet earth and filter coffee. It is the best weather in India. Almost nobody is sitting outside in it, because the balcony is where the washing machine lives.

Most Bengaluru flats already have the room for it: a six-foot balcony, facing the weather, waiting to become the place the family goes when the rain starts. It is a short list of decisions, none of them expensive, and it ends with a cup of coffee.

First, decide it is a room

The balcony fails because it is treated as a service space with a view. The washing machine, the drying rack, the shoe rack and the bags of recycling take the floor, and a plastic chair is put out for guests who never sit in it. Move the utility to the utility, or to a louvred cupboard at one end of the balcony that hides everything behind a slatted door. What is left is a room with the best light in the flat and a ceiling made of weather. It deserves to be designed like one.

The rain-watching balcony

The picture is what we mean. A built-in teak bench along the wall with cushions that come inside, a cane armchair turned to the view, a stone side table for the coffee and the book. A frangipani and a monstera in terracotta, a slatted screen with jasmine on it, a lantern and a brass wall light for when the sky goes dark at five. Teak underfoot, wet at the edge and dry where you sit. Nothing in it that the rain can hurt, and nothing that stops you watching the rain.

A six-foot builder balcony in monsoon light. Every element is chosen to survive the weather and to face it. Studio visualisation.

The seven decisions

1. Where the rain reaches

Stand on the balcony during a downpour and watch where the water lands. The builder's overhang usually keeps the back half dry and the front half wet. That line is the plan. The seat goes in the dry half, against the wall, where the rain is something you watch and not something you sit in. The plants go in the wet half, where the rain does the watering. If the overhang is shallow, a pergola with a real roof, polycarbonate or a slim standing-seam metal, over the seat alone, extends the dry half without closing the balcony in.

2. The floor, on pedestals

Teak or ipe deck tiles on pedestals over the builder's floor, so water runs beneath them to the drain and the surface you walk on is dry ten minutes after the rain stops. They warm the floor visually, they are pleasant barefoot, and they lift out in an afternoon if a drain needs attention. First, and before anything else, test the builder's drain with a bucket and check the slope. A balcony that ponds is a balcony that finds the living room, and the monsoon materials note has the order to do it in.

3. A seat that is built in

A loose sofa on a balcony is a sofa that gets rained on and dragged inside. A built-in bench in teak, along the back wall, with a hinged lid and dry storage beneath it for the cushions, is the seat that is always there. Cushions in an outdoor linen or a solution-dyed acrylic that looks like linen, in oatmeal, with one throw in rust or olive for the ten percent. Then one cane or rattan armchair that can be turned to the view, because a bench faces the wall opposite and the rain is over the railing.

4. A screen with something growing on it

Most balconies look straight into the neighbour's. A slatted screen in oak or teak at one end, with gaps wide enough to keep the breeze, gives privacy without a wall, and a climber on it, jasmine, star jasmine, a money plant, turns the screen into a hedge within a year. The scent of jasmine in rain is the reason to do this. It is also the reason to put the seat beside it.

5. Plants that like the weather

The monsoon is the one season the balcony waters itself, so plant for it. Large terracotta pots rather than many small ones, with saucers so the deck stays clean. A frangipani or a small olive as the tree. Ferns and a monstera in the wet corner, which will never look better than in August. Jasmine on the screen, curry leaf and tulsi in the sunniest spot for the kitchen. Pots on pot-feet so they drain, and nothing on the railing that a gust can take. The biophilic note has the longer list.

The Verandah Balcony Retreat from the boutique: a bench, a bistro table, and pots big enough to shrug off a week of rain. Studio visualisation.

6. Light for five o'clock

A monsoon afternoon goes dark early, and the balcony with one bare bulb over the door is abandoned at dusk. Two warm sources instead, on their own switch, rated for rain: a brass or blackened-steel wall light on the back wall, and a rattan or brass lantern on the floor or the table, at 2700 Kelvin, with a dimmer indoors. A string of festoon lights along the underside of the overhang if the family likes them. The rule from every other room applies here too: light the walls and the plants, never the ceiling.

7. The small table, and the coffee

One round side table in stone or teak, at the height of the bench arm, large enough for a tumbler, a plate and a book. It is the object that makes the balcony a place to stay rather than a place to stand. The filter coffee in a brass dabara is not a design decision, but it is the reason the room exists, and the table is where it goes.

What the rain must not reach

• —The sockets. Weatherproof, on the back wall under the overhang, on their own circuit with a trip, for the lantern and the phone.
• —The door threshold. A step of at least an inch between deck and living room, and a drain that is tested before the deck goes down.
• —Timber in standing water. Everything on pedestals or feet: the deck, the bench, the pots. Teak and ipe are chosen because they survive; nothing else is asked to.
• —Cushions overnight. Into the bench or inside. Outdoor fabric survives rain; nothing survives being left wet for a fortnight.
• —The washing. In the utility, or behind the louvred door at the far end, with a retractable line that vanishes when the rain starts.

What goes on a rain-facing balcony

If your balcony is facing the rain and holding the washing, send us a photograph of it and the floor plan. It is drawn with the living room in the first free set of designs, within seven days, as the room in the picture at the top of this note: dry where you sit, wet where the plants are, and lit for five o'clock.