Natural light always wins when it comes to your interiors! Now, you’ll always find us crushing over beautiful lighting fixtures (definitely one of our fav products to source!) but nothing really beats the beauty of natural light, whether it’s your living room, bathroom or bedroom – it’s always one of the first things we address when designing a space / home!
Now you may think it’s as simple as adding plenty of windows and glazing throughout, but there’s a little more work / thinking involved than you expect! Maximising light throughout different times of day whilst still protecting ourselves from our harsh climate and UV rays does require some planning…
So, today we’re sharing our own guide to maximising that beautiful natural light in your interiors!
Sun Path / House Position
First things first, you must understand the position of your home and how the natural sun path interacts with the each of your spaces. This will help determine how you treat your windows / glazed doors. As the sun moves throughout the day it’s important you’re making the most of the morning and afternoon sunlight when the rays aren’t as harsh. Keeping in mind the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, these will be the areas that will provide maximum sunshine but very intense heat. It may be a matter of re-locating these windows to another location (if possible) or treating them with a tint of window covering of some sort so that the level of light can be controlled.
Our Southport Residence
Our Ascot Residence
Skylights
We absolutely love using skylights in any home! Not only are they great for bathrooms where you’re typically limited with the number of windows you can put in the space, but even just great in any space to capture that additional natural light during the day.
You can take up even further and include a mechanical skylight that open and closes which will improve ventilation in those spaces also, which again is a very practical addition to a bathroom space!
Now we know a skylight isn’t possible in some of the spaces you need them most… if you’re an apartment owner don’t stop reading yet… Artificial ‘daylight’ LED’s can do just the trick when to give the illusion of natural light flooding through the space! We achieved this in our Woolstore apartment kitchen by creating a recess in the ceiling and adding a punchy ‘daylight’ LED, we couldn’t be happier with how it turned out!
Our Woolstore Apartment Residence
Our Chapel Hill Residence
Open Space
If you’re at the stage of spatial planning your entire home or a large portion of it, open plan living is another design method to let natural light access more parts of your home! Open plan living has certainly grown in popularity over the years for it’s practicality for the modern day lifestyle, but the benefits don’t stop there. By removing those walls closing off your kitchen, dining or living you’re allowing natural light to fill those spaces throughout different parts of the day!
Our Underwood Residence
Our Bayview Residence
Window Treatment
How you dress your windows / glazed doors also play a large role in how natural light interacts with your space. Whether that be a tint, frost, and of course our favourite, window coverings!
With the harsh sun rays we get here in Brisbane, we understand first instinct would be to block the sun out completely. However, this is where sheer fabric window treatments come into play! Having the ability to control the natural light in those particular ‘harsh’ times of the day means that you can control the amount of light enters your environment (and less use of artificial light when it isn’t necessary!)
Our Underwood Residence
Our Main Beach Apartment
