Ray of light Architecture Design
If a home layout does not work for its owners – generally it can be a result of poor design. Living spaces can be gloomy and we often find the house is back to front with no thought to designing for the site or sun. Older homes can be disjointed, and our clients were frustrated with all the sun on the roof during the day – not inside. The kitchen had a tiny window and lounge which faced south but the one saving grace was a beautiful, boxed bay window we repurposed.
We banked skylights together which transformed this home – drawing much needed light into their living space. Along with big stacker doors accessing the rear garden, it has made such a difference to this family home. The new living room had a cathedral ceiling and french doors on the west and the skylights created a lovely entertainment area for our family entertaining.
When we are designing, we consider aesthetics and functionality during the design phase of our architectural process.
Open plan areas can be a wonderful source of light and airiness, and using large stacker doors or bifolds, can create great indoor-outdoor flow – however you need to find a balance. These open plan areas can sometimes be noisy, difficult to heat and challenging when you have different users in one space at the same time. With this project we used bi-parting cavity sliders. They hide away in the walls, so you can still display artwork and glide open and close easily by using a finger-pull, reducing sound as well as improving the ability to heat a space. You can have the option of solid doors or glass cavity so the visual connection between rooms remains.
We flipped the entry door and created a new entry nook, with seating and hooks for coats and bags.
We repurposed the original living room as the new Master Bedroom. Building full height wardrobes between the Master Bedroom and the new Lounge to buffer sound. The original bathroom was repurposed as the new ensuite and the original boxed bay window was repurposed and added to the new living room. We designed a cathedral ceiling and skylights either side of the ridge, to pull in more light.
They can now have different family groups entertaining by sliding the timber, glass cavity doors across and open up to the connect to the new large timber deck and leafy backyard.
