Door Selection - Natural Light

I am all about creating as much natural light as possible. When we were without power for over a week due to the 2011 tornadoes, I loved it! I went to sleep when the sun went down and rose when the sun did. I had contemplated adding more windows to my old living room, I love the sunlight so much.

I actually never understood why a neighbor kept their blinds closed. It made the house so dark. To me, the dark house can be depressing. Kind of reminds me of Beauty and the Beast’s castle.

At work, we renovated an old (1940’s) building and moved into it a month ago. There is a conference room that has three gorgeous windows with an actual view!

Yet, the sun got in people’s eyes and the boss has ordered blinds to put in the window. My heart sank with the news. Once blinds are up, people will tend to keep them closed. If it were me, I’d “suffer” through the sunlight.

So, throughout the design process of this house, I have made sure that there are a lot of windows and views to see. If I was going to create another beautiful backyard, I wanted to be able to view it from more rooms than just one.

There are so many windows in this house, that even the master closet has windows! Usually when a garage or closet has windows, I view it as wasted space. It takes up wall space where you can hang things or shelves. Yet, in this case, the master closet ended up on the front of the house; the front porch, to be exact. I didn’t want to remove windows and have it look odd.

It saddened me that the closet would get natural light that I wouldn’t get to enjoy. This idea stuck for a while as I tried to find reasons that I would need to go into the closet often; and then it hit me. I could use glass insert doors with frosted/seeded glass that would let the light come from the closets even when the doors were closed!

I really did get excited and yell, “yes” a couple of times. There will be so much natural light coming in.

Are you one that likes the blinds open or closed?

 Note: I apologize that I will not share the detailed plan of our new home. A lot of my time went into designing a home specifically for my family’s needs with regards to our lot of land. Most architects do not share specific plans and I don’t want to jeopardize my family’s safety. It is my hope that I can still share pieces of it with you and you still capture the essence of the info. Thank you.