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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

Sharp corners are dangerous, I always feel like those windows will draw blood if I touch them with my mouse wrong.

Strangely enough, I stayed in an East Asian hotel (I think with Tibetan influences?) and I remember the corners of the room all being rounded. It just felt better, more soothing? It would be hella expensive to get a craftsman to round all the corners in your room here in the west, you could do it with plaster but it wouldn’t last more than a decade and wouldn’t add any resale value.

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Here in the UK it was pretty common up to say the 1940s for plasterers to curve the corners on outward pointing walls in hallways. This usually extends from the skirting up to the picture rail. There is a lovely transition from the curve to a point just below the picture rail, which is very elegant, but a total pain if you are hanging wallpaper, well, that's my experience anyway!

I've always felt it was one of those details that a plasterer could show off their skill, and you are right, it softens the corner in a very pleasing way.

> I remember the corners of the room all being rounded. It just felt better, more soothing?

It's funny. Here in the United States, I find houses with bull-nosed interior walls discomfiting. Something about all the rounded corners causes me mild distress. I find it much more comfortable being in houses with sharp-edged meetings of walls.

I know nuclear power stations have no sharp corners to make them easier to clean.

Do you have a source for that fact?

You know, I remember seeing this on older pictures, but I tried to come up with an example and couldn't, all recent pictures I could find had regular floor moldings.

I spent two summers as a cleaner at a pharmaceutical company in my late teens. The "round corners are easier to clean" were a thing there as well, reason I was told was that sharp corners will scrape off some residue from the cleaning cloths when you drag them over the corner.

Oh, ya, I can see this being really nice for the kitchen sink or the stand in shower. Right now, oil build up gets trapped in corners that require a brush to work out, which is tricky in the shower where it’s all calked.

It feels like the more things I use a kitchen sink for the more I appreciate corners. Cleaning is a little more involved but being able to e.g. set two buckets next to each other and have them be level is really really handy.

I don't see how rounded corners and edges prevent that? It is still going to be mostly rectangular, just not "sharp".

I don't know about power stations, but it's a common feature in medical devices.

E.g. keyboards have a flat or nearly-flat surface so they can be easily cleaned by wiping without leaving any germs behind in a groove, or on an edge.

I suppose something similar makes sense in an environment that could produce radioactive dust.

Your fridge has no sharp corners inside.

Mostly because it is injection molded, and that sharp corners on plastics are prone to crack.

It’s definitely true for some hospitals here in the UK.

I was curious and went looking. This is the closest I found after a quick google search. It refers only to lighting options in the reactor chamber not the hallways and such.

https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/analysis/featurehow-to-choo...

"There are some obvious considerations: all underwater nuclear lights should be crafted from stainless steel with rounded and smooth surfaces for easy decontamination, and have no sharp or jagged edges to reduce the risk of workers tearing safety gloves or clothing. "

Hmm. We do it to ceilings (coving). I think you maybe need wooden coving, mounted vertically. Then you can make a feature of it, skim it, paint it, whatever.

One of the houses I lived in during college had rounded room corners, and it was a very old house. I'm not sure how it was done.

With a round trowel and/or a wood template.

I have some experience plastering. Round corners are somewhat easier than sharp ones. The plaster/joint compound tends to pile up quickly in corners and it is hard to skim it thin.

Traditionally it was done here in eastern block with a beer bottle. A tool always within reach of a builder.

Beer bottles to make rounded corners? Brilliant!

How do you make a round corner with a beer bottle? I mean an actual corner (three walls meeting), not an edge (two walls).

Use the edge of the bottle base as a semicircle-shaped spatula and rotate the bottle as needed?

You should try staying in a yurt. No corners at all, felt like I was back in the womb. (I imagine)

I'm sure Buddhist architecture in Zhongdian was Mongolian influenced to some extent.

Bullnosing drywall isn't much more expensive then square corners?

My wife's grandmothers house here in the US, built around 1952, has rounded corners in a lot of the ceiling and doors. It is quite nice.

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