As a luxury home builder, one of the most common questions we receive is, how can I bring in more natural light to my custom home build?
The unquestionable positive powers that natural light bring to our mind and body do provide much inspiration for architectural home designs. To be able to ensure your home is flooded with natural light can not only lift your mood, provide warmth and savings on your energy bills, but can help you with the following health benefits:
- A boost of Vitamin D
- Can help stave off seasonal affective disorder
- Improve sleep
- May protect from some diseases
There are many considerations to discuss with your building designer that can ensure you maximise natural light streaming into your custom home build. This article will touch on some ideas to get you thinking about ways in which you can boost the natural light within your knock down rebuild project.
Skylights are often called ‘windows for the roof’ and with good reason. They can potentially bring in six times more natural light than a conventional window. When you think about it, this makes sense as the window is facing upward to the sun, and it is far less likely to be shadowed by other objects.
Another benefit of having a custom home build is your ability to design the floor plan, taking into account, areas on the block that won’t receive as much light, due to factors such as, other houses, garages, trees etc. Your building designer will work with you to consider the orientation of your luxury home, along with optimizing direct and indirect light, and consideration will be made to the path of the sun throughout the day, all year round. By positioning an abundance of windows along with your living areas on the North side of the home, this will be a simple, yet effective way to bring in the best natural light, all year round into your most lived in areas.
It goes without saying that increasing the size and the number of windows you have in your home will be the easiest way to increase natural light in your home. High windows allow for additional light to enter the room, but also help to maintain a sense of privacy which is valued in a bedroom setting. A large picture window not only looks grand and luxurious but will bring in a large amount of beautiful light to the home. This could be taken one step further with using huge floor to ceiling windows to really elevate the natural light. As seen below in this stunning kitchen.
When designing your custom home build, an important consideration to make is the style of doors. If your building designer incorporates bifold or stacking doors to the outside this means an entire wall can be transformed into glass, providing the ultimate in natural light. Other doors in your luxury custom home build can be glass or have windows to allow for more light to infiltrate your home.
Other helpful measures to maximise natural light in your custom home include, not blocking windows with furniture, avoiding heavy drapes or window treatments, using mirrors and keeping your windows clean. The choice of paint can have a huge effect on the light bouncing around a room, with lighter, brighter colours being the best choice.
We hope this article has provided some inspiration for designing your prestige home build, whether it is in one of the Whitehorse City Council suburbs of Box Hill, Blackburn or Vermont or one of the City of Boroondara suburbs such as; Camberwell, Glen Iris or Ashburton. We hope these ideas allow you to get the most health and lifestyle benefits by increasing natural light throughout your custom build home. If you wish to discuss your knock down rebuild project further, please contact us here.
