Delhi spends a substantial part of the year with air that nobody wants to breathe. Most responses to that are bought after the house is finished — a purifier in each room, plugged in wherever there happens to be a socket.
A good deal of it can be designed in instead. Here is how to plan a home in Delhi NCR for indoor air quality, from the envelope inwards.
The two problems, which pull in opposite directions
Outdoor air is often worse than indoor air in winter, so you want the house sealed.
A sealed house accumulates its own pollutants — carbon dioxide from people, moisture from cooking and bathing, and volatile compounds off new paint, adhesives and engineered board. So you need air changes.
Most Delhi homes resolve this badly: leaky enough to let outdoor particulates in, and not ventilated enough to flush what builds up inside. The better answer is to seal properly and then ventilate deliberately, with filtration.
Start with the envelope
You cannot filter air that is coming in around a window frame.
Windows and doors are the biggest leakage path. Good uPVC or thermally broken aluminium with proper gaskets makes a measurable difference, and it also helps with heat, noise and dust. If you are replacing windows anyway, this is the single highest-value upgrade available in a Delhi home.
Seal the gaps you cannot see: around pipe and cable penetrations, at AC sleeve openings, around exhaust fan housings, and where the window frame meets the masonry. These are small, cheap to seal during construction, and almost impossible to find later.
Entrance threshold and weather seal on the main door. Dust comes in at floor level more than people expect.
Then ventilate on purpose
A sealed house needs controlled fresh air. The options, in rough order of cost:
Window ventilation on good days. Delhi has genuinely clean stretches — much of the monsoon and parts of spring. Design for cross-ventilation so you can actually use them: openable windows on opposite sides of a space, which is a planning decision made long before anyone thinks about air.
Extract where pollution is generated. A properly sized kitchen chimney ducted outside rather than recirculating, and genuine extraction in every bathroom, ducted out rather than into the ceiling void. This is the most under-specified item in Indian homes and it removes moisture and cooking particulates at source.
Fresh air units with filtration. A supply system that draws outdoor air through a filter before delivering it indoors, so you get air changes without the particulates. Increasingly common in Delhi homes and worth planning for rather than retrofitting — it needs duct routes and a unit location.
Heat or energy recovery ventilation adds a heat exchanger so you are not throwing away conditioned air. Most relevant in a tightly built house with high running hours.
Plan for purifiers rather than scattering them
Most households end up with purifiers regardless. The difference between planned and unplanned is whether they work and whether you can live with them.
- Decide positions during design — a purifier needs clearance around it to draw and discharge, so it cannot be jammed into a corner or behind a sofa
- Give each one a socket at the right place, so there is no cable across a floor
- Size for the room, not for the brand’s optimistic claim. Check the clean air delivery rate against the actual room volume
- Prioritise bedrooms, where you spend eight continuous hours
- Consider a built-in niche in the joinery for a floor-standing unit, so it stops being a visible appliance
Material choices that affect the air
This matters most in the months after a renovation, when a new interior off-gasses.
Low-VOC paints are widely available now and cost marginally more. Worth specifying in bedrooms and children’s rooms at minimum.
Engineered board releases formaldehyde as it cures, and a house full of new joinery releases a lot of it. Ask for E1 or E0 grade board where the budget allows, and ventilate heavily for the first few weeks after handover — ideally before anyone moves in.
Adhesives and sealants are a bigger contributor than people assume. Low-VOC options exist for most applications.
Finish timing: where possible, schedule painting and polishing so there are several weeks of ventilation before occupation. This is a programme decision, not a product one, and it costs nothing.
Dust, which is the daily reality
Separate from air quality in the health sense, and the thing you actually notice.
Closed storage over open shelving. Every open shelf is a weekly job in this city.
Flush joinery with fewer ledges. Elaborate mouldings are dust shelves; simpler profiles stay looking clean.
Washable fabrics, and washable paint in circulation areas.
A recessed mat well at the entrance, which keeps grit out of the rest of the house.
Floors that do not show everything — matt rather than gloss, and not near-black. A dark polished floor looks superb for about two hours after mopping.
What we would specify in a Delhi home
Good sealed windows. Penetrations sealed during construction. Ducted extraction in kitchen and every bathroom. Cross-ventilation designed into the plan so clean days can be used. Fresh-air provision with filtration where the budget allows, planned at drawing stage. Purifier positions and sockets allocated in bedrooms. Low-VOC paints and better-grade board. Closed storage and matt finishes.
Almost none of that is visible in a photograph, and it is a significant part of what makes a house comfortable to live in here.
Getting it right
We treat air as part of the services design rather than as something bought afterwards — extraction, fresh air routes, sealing details and purifier positions resolved alongside the electrical and ceiling drawings.
If you are planning a home in Delhi NCR, tell us about it. See also materials that survive the Delhi climate, home automation, and service and plant planning.
About Pochē Aesthetics
Pochē Aesthetics — also written Poche Aesthetics — is a luxury residential architecture and interior design practice based in Greater Kailash, New Delhi, founded and led by architect Niyati Satsangi. Over more than twelve years the practice has designed private homes — farmhouses, villas, builder floors and apartments — across Delhi NCR and India, handling architecture, interiors, materials, lighting and styling as one connected commission, alongside select restaurant and commercial work. More about the practice.