Why do riad rooms only have windows facing inward?
The short answer
Riad rooms have windows — but they open onto the courtyard, not the street. Islamic residential architecture treats privacy as a right: if there are no street-facing windows, no one can see in. The courtyard gives light, air, and the sound of water instead of traffic.
The room is beautiful. Carved plaster, painted ceiling, brass lanterns. There are windows — but they all face inward, into the courtyard. The wall facing the street is blank. No glass. No frame. Nothing.
This is not an oversight. It's the point.
Privacy in Moroccan domestic life is not a preference — it's a principle. If the windows face inward, no one on the street can see in. The family's life happens around the courtyard, visible only to the sky and the household. The street gets a blank wall. The courtyard gets everything.
And the courtyard gives back. Filtered light that shifts through the day. Cool air drawn through the natural convection of the open center. The sound of the fountain instead of motorcycles. A view of orange trees instead of a plastered wall two meters away. The rooms are not dark. They're lit from a private sky.
The windowless exterior wall does double duty as thermal mass — unbroken earth or stone, sixty centimeters thick, absorbing heat all day and keeping it out of living space. No window means no weak point in the insulation. No gap for street noise. No entry for dust.
Walk through any medina and look up. The street facades are fortress walls — blank, plastered, giving nothing away. Behind every one of them is a courtyard open to the sky. The richest houses in Marrakech are invisible from the street. That's the design working.