Loss of view or sunlight: can you be compensated?

The principle: no acquired right to a view

An owner has, in principle, no acquired right to keep the view or the light they enjoy. Their neighbour may therefore build, add a storey or plant on their own land, subject to planning rules and statutory distances, even if this reduces the view or the sunlight of the adjoining property. The mere loss of a panorama or of an open outlook is not, in itself, compensable harm.

This rule combines with the servitudes of view in Articles 675 to 680 of the French Civil Code, which govern windows and openings looking onto the neighbour's land but create no right to keep an existing view.

The exception: excessive and abnormal deprivation

Case law accepts that a loss of view or of sunlight may be compensated where it reaches an excessive degree and amounts to abnormal neighbourhood nuisance within the meaning of Article 1253 of the French Civil Code. The court assesses in concreto the seriousness of the deprivation: the height and the siting of the new building, the loss of light suffered inside the home, the loss of value of the property, and the urban or suburban environment.

Two important qualifications emerge. First, loss of view taken on its own rarely succeeds: it is mainly upheld where it comes together with a loss of sunlight or of privacy. Second, the degree of urbanisation of the area is decisive, and the Cour de cassation has held that the lower courts cannot find abnormal nuisance without examining whether the urbanisation of the area rules it out (Cass. 3rd civ., 27 March 2025, No. 23-21.076). In a dense area, loss of view alone therefore has little chance of being compensated.

The neighbour's compliance with planning rules does not bar this liability: a perfectly authorised building may nevertheless create abnormal nuisance if it lastingly deprives the adjoining property of light or of view in a disproportionate way. Conversely, a measured inconvenience remains a normal inconvenience of neighbourhood.

What the victim can ask for

Where the nuisance is found to be abnormal, compensation most often takes the form of damages making good the loss of value and the disturbance suffered. Demolition or alteration of the structure remains exceptional and presupposes a particularly serious interference. It is prudent to have the situation formally recorded before and after the neighbour's works, and to use an expert appraisal to quantify the loss of light or of value.