Walk through the old lanes of Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur or the pols of Ahmedabad and the street is framed by small rooms hanging in the air. They project from the upper floors on carved brackets, their fronts screened with jaali, their tops crowned with little domes, hoods or curved roofs. These are jharokhas — the Indian bay window — and for several centuries they were where a household met the street: a place to sit on the floor with a cushion, feel the breeze, watch a procession, or simply be present in the life of the town without being on show.
Today the word is used loosely. Builders call any arched window a jharokha; furniture makers sell plywood TV units with a cusped arch and call them jharokha style; heritage hotels bolt fibreglass canopies onto concrete walls. The shape survives, but the reasons for it — the low sill for floor sitting, the deep projection that shades the wall below, the brackets that carry the weight back into a thick wall, the screen that gives privacy by daylight — are often lost. A jharokha copied without those reasons becomes a decorative box that is too shallow to sit in, too high to see out of, and too hot to use.
This article traces the jharokha from palace balconies and imperial ceremony to merchant havelis and wooden town houses, explains how it is built and why it works in a hot climate, gives the dimensions that recur in historic examples, and turns them into practical guidance for a modern bay window or jharokha-inspired balcony in an Indian home. Dates and monuments are given only where they are well established; where the record is uncertain, the article describes the pattern rather than inventing a date.
What a jharokha is — and what it is not
A jharokha is an enclosed window-balcony that projects from the face of an upper wall. Three things define it. First, it projects: unlike a window set in the thickness of the wall, it pushes forward into the street or courtyard, usually by somewhere between half a metre and a metre. Second, it is enclosed: it has a parapet in front, columns or posts at the corners, and a roof or hood above, so it reads as a small room rather than an open ledge. Third, it is carried on brackets — corbels of stone or timber — rather than on columns rising from the ground. A jharokha may be a single bay just wide enough for one or two people, or a long gallery of several bays running across a palace facade.
It is worth separating it from its neighbours. A chhajja is a sloping or flat stone eave projecting over a window or along a wall to throw off sun and rain; a jharokha usually has one built into its roof, but a chhajja alone is not a jharokha. An open balcony, or chhajja with a railing, lets people step out but gives no enclosure overhead. A plain window in a thick wall gives light and air but no projection. The jharokha combines all of these: it is a window that people sit in, a balcony with a roof, and a shading device for the wall below. Its close relatives elsewhere in the world are the mashrabiya of the Arab world, the European oriel window and the Goan balcão — each a response to the same desire to sit at the edge of the house and look out.
| Element | Projects? | Enclosed? | Carried on | Main purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jharokha | Yes, about 600–900 mm in town houses | Yes — parapet, posts, roof or hood | Stone or timber brackets | Sitting, viewing unseen, shade and breeze |
| Chhajja | Yes, about 450–900 mm | No | Brackets or a cantilevered slab | Shade and rain protection over openings |
| Open balcony | Yes | Partly — railing only | Brackets, beams or a cantilever slab | Stepping out, drying, plants |
| Plain window in a thick wall | No | Within the wall | Lintel or arch | Light and air |
| Mashrabiya (Arab world) | Yes | Fully, with turned-wood lattice | Timber brackets or beams | Privacy, cooling, water jars set to cool |
| Oriel window (Europe) | Yes | Fully glazed | Corbels or brackets | Light, view, extra floor space |
| Modern bay window | Yes, about 450–900 mm | Glazed, with a seat | RCC cantilever or steel frame | Window seat, light, view |
Origins: palace windows, royal balconies and the curved roof
Projecting balconies and windows on brackets are old in Indian architecture, and carved stone brackets supporting projecting elements appear widely in temple and palace building long before the Mughals. The jharokha as it is now recognised — a bracketed, roofed window-balcony repeated across the upper facades of forts, palaces and town houses — belongs to the great building period of the Rajput kingdoms and the Mughal empire, roughly from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. In the hill forts and palaces of Rajasthan, the upper storeys of the zenana, the women's quarters, were lined with screened jharokhas from which the royal women could see courtyards, gardens and the landscape below without being seen.
The Mughals gave the jharokha a political meaning. Under Akbar, the emperor began appearing each morning at a jharokha in the palace wall so that his subjects could see him — a ceremony called jharokha darshan. It became a central ritual of Mughal kingship under Jahangir and Shah Jahan: the public appearance of the ruler at a raised, framed window assured people that the emperor was alive and that the realm was in order. Aurangzeb later discontinued the practice. The great audience halls of the Mughal forts at Agra and Delhi still have raised, canopied balconies of white marble from which the emperor addressed the court, and the idea of the ruler framed in a window passed into the palaces of the Rajput states too.
The jharokha's most recognisable crown — the curved roof — came from the east. The bangla or bangaldar roof imitates the curved bamboo-and-thatch roof of the village huts of Bengal, whose eaves droop at the ends to shed heavy rain. Translated into stone and marble, it became a favourite of Mughal builders in Shah Jahan's time and of Rajput builders after them, used for small pavilions, imperial balconies and window canopies. A small curved stone roof on a jharokha in Jodhpur or Bundi is therefore a piece of Bengali vernacular carried across the subcontinent through the court workshops.
The jharokha in the haveli and the town
From the palace, the jharokha moved into the house. As merchant families in the trading towns of Rajasthan and Gujarat grew wealthy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they built tall townhouses — havelis — whose street facades were lined with jharokhas. In Jaisalmer, the havelis below the fort, of which Patwon ki Haveli (begun in the early nineteenth century) is the best known, carry tier upon tier of yellow sandstone jharokhas so densely carved that the facade reads almost as lace. In Jaipur, the Hawa Mahal of 1799 took the idea to its extreme: a five-storey screen of small latticed windows and jharokhas from which the women of the court could watch the processions on the street below.
In the haveli, the jharokha did several jobs at once. It gave the women of the household, who in many communities observed purdah, a place to watch the street and festivals without being seen. It let the family keep an eye on the door and the lane. It caught the breeze in narrow streets where a flat window would get none. And, repeated across the facade, it announced the family's status: the number, depth and richness of jharokhas on a haveli was a public statement of wealth, in the same way that a carved doorway was.
Gujarat developed its own version in timber. In the pols of old Ahmedabad — the dense residential neighbourhoods that form part of the city's UNESCO World Heritage inscription — and in towns across the state, houses were built with timber frames and richly carved wooden facades. Their upper floors project over the street on carved timber brackets, and their windows and balconies form continuous screened bays of wood. The Bohra houses of Siddhpur, built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, show a later, more European-influenced form of the same idea, with long rows of projecting windows and balconies along the street. For a Surat or Ahmedabad homeowner, these timber facades are the jharokha closest to home.
| Region | Typical material | Character of the jharokha | Well-known places to see it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jaisalmer | Yellow sandstone | Dense, deeply carved, tiered jharokhas with fine jaali | Havelis below the fort, including Patwon ki Haveli |
| Jodhpur and Bikaner | Red and pink sandstone | Robust brackets, carved screens, curved roofs | Mehrangarh Fort palaces, old-city havelis, Junagarh Fort |
| Jaipur | Lime-plastered brick and stone, pink wash | Uniform bazaar facades, small latticed bays | Hawa Mahal, City Palace, bazaar frontages |
| Udaipur and Mewar | Stone with lime plaster, white wash | Lake-facing balconies and pavilions with domes | City Palace and lake-front buildings |
| Agra and Delhi (Mughal) | White marble, red sandstone | Imperial balconies and canopies, inlay, bangla roofs | Audience halls of Agra Fort and the Red Fort |
| Gujarat (Ahmedabad pols, Siddhpur) | Carved teak and other timbers | Continuous wooden bays on carved timber brackets | Pol houses of Ahmedabad; Bohra houses of Siddhpur |
Anatomy of a jharokha: parts and typical sizes
A jharokha is assembled from a small set of parts, and naming them makes both old buildings and new drawings easier to read. At the bottom, a row of brackets (corbels) steps out from the wall, often carved as lotus buds, elephants, peacocks or simple scrolls. They carry a base slab or platform — the floor of the jharokha. On the front edge of the platform stands the parapet: a low screen, often a jaali, at about knee to waist height when standing, because users sat on the floor. Slender columns rise from the parapet corners to carry small cusped or scalloped arches, and above the arches a projecting eave (chhajja) and a roof — a flat slab, a small dome (chhatri form), a pyramidal hood or the curved bangla roof — complete the box.
Historic dimensions vary from town to town, but some proportions recur, and they are consistent with the dimensions in this site's article on Rajasthani havelis. A single-bay town jharokha is commonly about 1,200–1,800 mm wide and projects 600–900 mm from the wall. Its parapet is low — about 450–600 mm above the jharokha floor — so that a person sitting on a cushion has eyes just above it or looking through the jaali. The opening rises roughly 1,200 mm above the parapet to the arch, and the chhajja above projects a further 300–450 mm beyond the face of the columns. The drawing below shows these as typical ranges, not as measurements of any one building.
| Part | Hindi / common name | Typical size (indicative) | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brackets (corbels) | Todi, kangura-style brackets | 2–4 stepped courses; each stepping 100–200 mm | Carry the projection back into the wall |
| Platform / floor slab | Chhajja patti or jharokha floor | Stone 75–150 mm thick; projects 600–900 mm | Floor for sitting; ties the brackets together |
| Parapet | Jaali or kathera | 450–600 mm above the platform | Privacy and safety for a seated user |
| Columns or posts | Stambh | 75–150 mm square or round | Carry the arches and roof; frame the view |
| Arches | Cusped or scalloped mehrab | Rising to about 1,200 mm above the parapet | Frame the opening; spread roof load to columns |
| Eave | Chhajja | Projects 300–450 mm beyond the columns | Throws rain clear; shades the opening |
| Roof | Bangla, chhatri dome or flat slab | Bay width plus the eave | Weather cover and the jharokha's silhouette |
How a jharokha stays up: the corbel principle
A historic stone jharokha can project close to a metre from a wall with no steel at all, and the reason is the corbel. Each bracket is a long stone set mostly inside the wall, with only a short length projecting. The next course above projects a little further, and so on, so that the brackets step outwards like an inverted staircase. The part of each stone buried in the wall — the tail — is held down by the weight of the masonry above it. As long as the weight holding the tail down is comfortably greater than the weight trying to tip the projection over, the bracket stays in place. That is why historic jharokhas sit in walls that are often 450 mm thick or more, and why they are almost always on upper floors, where there is plenty of wall above to hold them down.
This principle has two consequences for anyone restoring or copying a jharokha. First, a jharokha cannot simply be fixed to the face of a modern wall. A 230 mm brick wall in an RCC frame has very little weight above any one point and is usually only infill between columns; it cannot hold a stone corbel tail. Second, the weight is real. A stone jharokha of 1,500 mm width with a stone roof and jaali parapet can easily weigh several hundred kilograms. In a modern building, the projection must be carried by a cantilevered RCC slab or a steel frame designed by a structural engineer, and any stone, GFRC or timber brackets become cladding hung on that structure.
Why it works: shade, breeze and privacy
The jharokha is often described as decoration, but in the hot, dry climates of Rajasthan and the hot, humid summers of Gujarat it was working equipment. Its first job is shade. The roof and chhajja shade the opening itself, and the projecting box shades the wall below it, so a facade lined with jharokhas receives much less direct sun than a flat wall with flush windows. In a narrow lane, rows of projecting jharokhas on both sides shade the street too, which is one reason old bazaars feel cooler than new roads.
Its second job is air. Because the jharokha projects into the street, its side openings catch breezes moving along the lane that a flush window would miss, and air entering through the jaali parapet low down sweeps across a person sitting on the floor — exactly where it is felt. Its third job is privacy, and here it works like any jaali: by daylight, the bright street side makes the screen read as a solid surface to a passer-by, while the person in the darker interior looks out easily. This is the same one-way effect described in this site's article on the Indian jaali, and like the jaali it reverses at night when the room is lit.
The low parapet deserves attention because it is the detail most often lost in modern copies. A person sitting cross-legged on a floor cushion has eyes roughly 750–850 mm above the floor. A parapet of 450–600 mm lets that person see the street over or through the jaali, while still protecting against a fall for someone sitting or kneeling. Modern copies that set the sill at the 900–1,000 mm of an ordinary window turn the jharokha into a box that can only be looked out of while standing — and nobody stands in a jharokha for long.
From jharokha to bay window: what changed in the twentieth century
Through the colonial period, Indian towns absorbed European bay and oriel windows alongside their own jharokhas, and the two often merged: timber-framed projecting windows with glazed sashes on carved brackets appear across the bungalows and town houses of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Glass changed the jharokha's character. Where the old jharokha was open to the air behind a screen, the glazed bay window is a sealed box, which gives light and a view but traps heat if it faces the sun.
The reinforced-concrete frame changed it again. A cantilevered RCC slab can carry a projecting bay without thick walls, so the bay window became a standard feature of Indian apartments from the late twentieth century — often as a 450–600 mm projecting box with a granite or marble sill used as a ledge. Many cities' development control rules treat such projections specially when calculating built-up area and setbacks, which helps explain why they became so common and why they vary so much in depth between cities. Anyone planning a new projection on an existing building should check the local bye-laws and the building's approvals before designing it.
| Feature | Historic jharokha | Typical apartment bay window | Well-designed modern jharokha bay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Structure | Stone or timber corbels tailed into a thick wall | RCC cantilever slab | RCC cantilever or steel frame designed by an engineer |
| Projection | 600–900 mm | 450–600 mm | 600–900 mm where bye-laws allow |
| Sill / seat height | Floor level inside; parapet 450–600 mm | Often 450–750 mm ledge, rarely a real seat | Seat 450–500 mm high, 600–900 mm deep |
| Enclosure | Open behind a jaali; roofed | Fixed or sliding glass on three sides | Glass with an external screen or openable jaali |
| Shade | Deep roof and chhajja | Often none — overheats facing west | External hood 450–600 mm; screen on the sunny face |
| Ventilation | Through the jaali and side openings | Limited — often fixed glass | Openable side panels for cross-breeze |
| Use | Sitting, watching, sleeping in summer | Storage ledge, plant shelf | Reading seat, tea corner, child's nook |
Designing a modern jharokha or bay window
The best way to borrow the jharokha is to borrow its proportions and its purpose, not its carving. A modern jharokha bay should be deep enough to sit in, low enough to see out of while seated, shaded from outside, ventilated through openable panels or a screen, and structurally designed as part of the building. In a bungalow, it can be planned from the start as a cantilevered bay; in an apartment, an existing bay window can often be converted into a real window seat with cushions, storage below and an external or internal screen.
Five design decisions
Depth: aim for 600–900 mm of clear seat depth, which allows sitting cross-legged or with legs stretched along the seat; anything under about 450 mm is a ledge, not a seat. Height: set the seat at 450–500 mm for sitting with feet on the floor, or build a platform at floor level for the traditional cushion-sitting jharokha. Width: 1,500–2,100 mm suits one adult lying down or two sitting; a wider bay can be divided by a column, as historic multi-bay jharokhas were. Shade: give the bay an external hood of 450–600 mm, deeper on west and south faces, or an external jaali or louvre screen 100–600 mm outside the glass. Air: make at least the side panels openable, so the bay catches breezes along the facade as the old jharokha did.
Material choices follow the same logic as for any jaali or facade element. Inside, a seat in BWP plywood or HDHMR with a laminate or veneer finish, cushions in a washable fabric and storage drawers below is the common solution. Outside, a jaali screen or bracket cladding can be made in powder-coated mild steel or aluminium, GFRC, terracotta or natural stone, with the weight of stone and GFRC always checked by the structural engineer. The costs below are indicative October 2026 ranges consistent with this site's jaali and haveli articles; structural work for a new projection is project-specific and should be priced from drawings.
| Item | Typical specification | Indicative cost (October 2026) | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Window seat joinery | BWP plywood or HDHMR, laminate finish, drawers below, 1,800 mm bay | ₹25,000–60,000 | Veneer or PU finish costs more; cushions extra |
| Seat cushion and bolsters | Foam 75–100 mm with washable fabric cover | ₹6,000–20,000 | Depends on fabric and size |
| Internal jaali screen (MDF, CNC) | 12–18 mm MDF or HDHMR, PU or duco painted | ₹350–800 per sq ft installed | Dry interior use only |
| External jaali (mild steel, laser cut) | 2–6 mm MS, galvanised and powder coated | ₹450–1,000 per sq ft installed | Coastal sites need proper corrosion protection |
| GFRC brackets and hood cladding | Moulded GFRC fixed to a structural frame | ₹700–1,600 per sq ft (screens); brackets priced per piece | Weight and fixing checked by an engineer |
| Natural stone jaali or brackets | Sandstone or marble, CNC or hand carved | ₹1,500–6,000+ per sq ft | Heavy; structural check essential |
| New RCC or steel bay structure | Cantilever slab or steel frame, waterproofing, glazing | Project-specific — verify locally with drawings | Needs bye-law check and structural design |
Restoring and caring for historic jharokhas
Old jharokhas fail in predictable ways. Water enters through cracked roof slabs and open joints, rusts any iron cramps or dowels inside the stone, and the expanding rust splits the stone from inside. Brackets crack where a heavy load meets a flaw in the stone. Timber jharokhas in Gujarat suffer from termites, rot at the bearing ends and the loss of carved pieces. Well-meant repairs often make things worse: cement mortar and cement plaster are harder and less breathable than the original lime, so they trap moisture and push damage into the softer stone around them.
Conservation practice in India, as set out by the Archaeological Survey of India for protected monuments and by heritage organisations such as INTACH for listed buildings, favours minimum intervention, compatible materials and reversible repairs: lime mortars instead of cement, stainless-steel instead of mild-steel cramps where new fixings are unavoidable, consolidation of cracked brackets rather than replacement, and replacement stone or timber matched in type and worked by skilled craftsmen. For a protected or listed building, any work requires the relevant authority's permission. For a privately owned old house, a conservation architect and a structural engineer experienced in masonry should inspect the jharokhas before anyone stands in them regularly.
The jharokha tomorrow
The jharokha is returning in three forms. The first is the climate bay: a deep, shaded projecting window on a west or south facade that gives the room a seat and the glass a hood, increasingly specified because of the overheating of all-glass apartments. The second is the screened balcony, where an external jaali of metal, terracotta or GFRC wraps a balcony so it can be used as a room for much of the year. The third is the interior jharokha — a raised, framed seat inside a large living room or double-height space that looks down into the room, giving the same pleasure of watching from a protected perch.
Digital fabrication helps. CNC-cut and laser-cut screens make complex patterns affordable, GFRC moulds allow brackets and hoods to be repeated across a facade at a fraction of the weight of stone, and parametric tools let designers vary the openness of a screen with orientation. What the technology does not change is the jharokha's brief, which is worth keeping as a checklist: a seat, a view, shade, breeze and privacy, carried safely by the building.
Rules for a jharokha that people actually use
- Design it as a seat first: 600–900 mm deep, with the seat at 450–500 mm or a floor-level platform for cushions.
- Keep the parapet or sill low (450–600 mm above the seat floor) so a seated person can see out.
- Give it a hood of 450–600 mm, deeper on west and south faces, or an external screen outside the glass.
- Make at least the side panels openable so the bay catches breezes along the facade.
- Never fix a projecting stone, GFRC or timber jharokha to a brick infill wall — have the bay structure designed by a structural engineer.
- Check local bye-laws and building approvals before adding any new projection to an existing building.
- Use safety glass and fit opening restrictors or guards on upper floors, especially where children sit.
- On historic buildings, repair with lime and compatible stone or timber, and get permission where the building is protected or listed.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a jharokha and a balcony?
A balcony is an open platform with a railing that people step out onto. A jharokha is enclosed — it has a parapet, corner columns and a roof or hood — and it is used as a small room or seat at the edge of the house rather than as an open outdoor space. A jharokha shades the wall below and screens the person inside; an open balcony does neither.
What was jharokha darshan?
Jharokha darshan was the Mughal practice, begun under Akbar, of the emperor appearing each morning at a window or balcony in the palace wall so that people gathered below could see him. It continued under Jahangir and Shah Jahan and was later discontinued by Aurangzeb. It made the jharokha a symbol of royal presence and authority.
Why do jharokhas have curved roofs?
The curved bangla or bangaldar roof imitates the curved bamboo-and-thatch roofs of village huts in Bengal, which shed heavy rain. Mughal builders adopted the form in stone and marble for pavilions and balconies, and Rajput builders used it widely afterwards, which is why it crowns many jharokhas in Rajasthan.
Can a jharokha be added to a flat?
A new projection on an apartment facade usually needs the building society's consent and approval under local bye-laws, and must be structurally designed — so it is rarely practical. The usual route is to convert an existing bay window into a jharokha-style seat: a 600–900 mm deep seat with storage, cushions, an internal jaali or arched frame, and an external shade or screen where the building allows it.
How much does a jharokha window seat cost?
For an existing bay of about 1,800 mm, a laminate-finished plywood or HDHMR window seat with drawers costs roughly ₹25,000–60,000, and cushions about ₹6,000–20,000 more (indicative October 2026). An internal CNC jaali screen adds about ₹350–800 per sq ft. A new structural bay is priced from drawings and depends on the building.
Sources & standards
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Historic City of Ahmedabad (2017), Hill Forts of Rajasthan (2013), Jaipur City, Rajasthan (2019), Agra Fort (1983) and Red Fort Complex (2007): official descriptions
- Archaeological Survey of India — monument notes on Agra Fort and the Red Fort, Delhi; conservation policy for protected monuments
- Department of Tourism, Government of Rajasthan — Hawa Mahal (built 1799), Jaisalmer havelis and Patwon ki Haveli
- INTACH — Charter for the Conservation of Unprotected Architectural Heritage and Sites in India (2004)
- Bureau of Indian Standards — National Building Code of India 2016, Part 6 (Structural Design) and Part 3 (Development Control Rules); IS 875 (Part 2) Imposed loads
- Ebba Koch, Mughal Architecture: An Outline of Its History and Development (1526–1858); Catherine B. Asher, Architecture of Mughal India (Cambridge) — jharokha darshan and the bangla roof
- Price ranges: indicative October 2026 estimates — confirm locally before budgeting
