Winter light is a material. Buy for it.

A south-east European winter is not a Nordic winter, but it is still a season of low sun and early lamps. Rooms furnished only for June look closed by four.

You do not have to live in white. You do need one large pale plane — a rug, a curtain, a sofa — that can return the window to the room.

Take the room photo on a dim afternoon if that is when you are home. Dropping a charcoal sofa into a June photograph will flatter a piece that fails in December.

Lamps with shades, not just bare bulbs, keep the evening from becoming a cave once the window has given up.