Generous use of glass in a home can create an enhanced connection to the outside world helping us feel more engaged with our outdoor environment. Visual connections with external areas give us a sense of space and freedom while at the same time glass can also provide us with security and sanctuary from outdoor elements – a combination that other home build materials can’t provide. Through The Living Space Viridian Glass has provided a place to interact, discover and be inspired about natural light.  We would like to share five unique homes that have incorporated natural light into their design in inspirational yet functional ways across five categories that represent how natural light can transform our lives.

Wellbeing

Generous light and space can help a family escape the stresses of the outside world making a house feel more like a  ‘home’.  In addition to the obvious visual advantages, natural light offers multiple health benefits, including a positive impact on mood and mental health.*  This stunning Palm Beach house in NSW introduces generous amounts of natural light.

Space

We all want more space in our homes; it’s one of the greatest luxuries in home design. It allows not only a physical freedom, but a mental freedom as well. Natural light has an amazing ability to transform a dark, uninviting room to an expansive stretch of welcoming space. This property in Bruny Island, Tasmania utilises extensive glass areas to allow large volumes of  natural light into the home helping connect the indoor living space to the natural surroundings outside. This creates a strong visual connection to the outdoor environment, whilst maintaining a comfortable sense of space and warmth in the home.

Comfort

The ideal home should be cool in summer and warm in winter without running up energy bills. We want our homes to provide us with a stable internal temperature that we can relax in – whilst at the same time providing us with a living space that looks good and is in sync with the world around us. This amazing beach house in Austinmer, south of Sydney maintains perfect comfort levels whilst featuring large glass areas that facilitate an abundance of natural light. The strategic placement of performance glass regulates the internal temperature and illuminates the living space within.

Sanctuary

A home should be a sanctuary, a place where we can feel connected to the outside environment, yet still feel peaceful and safe inside. We want to let positive things like natural light and incredible views into our homes, but keep negative elements like external noise out. The iconic ‘Pole House’ on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road achieves this balance. Featuring large window areas this stunning property offers a peaceful residence that maintains a strong connection to the dramatic coastline outside.

Design

Good design needs to fulfil its purpose and the design decisions made at the building or renovation stage have a lasting impact on the quality of life in a home.  As glass is really the most effective way to control the levels of natural light in your home, the glass and window choices made during the design stage will play a crucial role in the functionality and comfort levels of a property. Secondly, good design needs to help showcase the features of the home in their best light and glass offers a unique and versatile way to do this. Incorporating natural light through the clever usage of glass not only improves the aesthetics of your home, but also improves its market value. Here, another house in Austinmer, NSW uses smart design to create a visually striking exterior, whilst maintaining is functionality as a home.

If you want to discover more about how natural light can make your home a better place to live and grow your family, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram.

The Living Space is brought to you by Viridian New World Glass.

* http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389945706006812 

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We just love this house down on St. Andrews Beach on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. It’s like there is a seamlessness between the inside and out. The windows ‘borrow’ the space from outside and give us this beautiful, expansive feeling. The complete house and its location is very considered.

All of the spaces in the house are all cleverly designed to reap the benefits of the abundant natural light at different times of the day. The light is a constant companion in the living areas and the windows are crafted to frame the landscape creating ‘living art’ on the walls. The project uses a combination of double and single glazing and louvres to make the most of the sea breezes.

Design

You can tell when you walk into a really well designed home. It just feels ‘considered’. Like someone has sweated the small stuff. For us, both big and small design features are so important to the overall feeling of comfort. Well designed homes are those where people have thought long and hard about how the owners live in the house – what do they like doing in their house – and importantly – when do they like doing it? For example, it’s no good having a home office that is well appointed with all the best furnishings, but which is oppressively cold and dark to sit in during working hours.

Through design and products, we have the ability to draw the right kind of light into the right part of our house at the right time. This is a big factor in zoning and sectioning that we see a lot more of in modern homes. Good design – that which exploits the powers of quality materials – gives us the ability to draw more of the right kind of light into the right part of our house for extended periods. This makes a world of difference, not only to where we live, but to how we live.

Comfort

A home is usually a pretty good reflection of who we are or who we want to be. It is a collection of our most treasured possessions – but more than that, it is a place where we can relax. A place where we can throw off the worries and concerns of the outside world and just be ourselves. Nowadays, it seems like we have less and less time to just relax – but for us, being comfortable in your own home is so important.

While internal design features play a big role in making a home comfortable; making sure your windows help to control the light and temperature is really important. So whether it’s a favourite chair that you like to read in, the nice even temperature through the house or even the way the light comes into your bedroom in the morning, all of these add up to the level of comfort or ‘liveability’ of a house.

Sanctuary

For ages, glass was looked upon as being a compromise in security and efficiency. But through advances in technology we have seen glass match and sometimes outperform other building materials in keeping a house safe.

We now have this mastery of our environment to such an extent that we can look out on the world’s dangers and annoyances without worrying about them in our homes. And it’s not just about security, there is still nothing else like glass – the ability to see out and be visually connected to the outside world while still providing the safety we’ve come to expect puts glass in a category all on its own. It’s quite literally the best of both worlds. It’s this connection to both our home and family, but also the environment that leads to this feeling of contentment.

Wellbeing

Where’s your spot? We all have that one or two places in our homes that we really really love. We may be a bit biased, but we feel that natural light has a huge role to play in creating these places in our home.

We recently went through this beautiful house and were struck by the study. The well worn chair and the stack of books that spoke to the amount of hours that had been spent in the light by the window reading. And it’s not just about the feeling and emotion we get by surrounding ourselves in natural light, there’s so much science on the relationship between natural light and human happiness. Maybe that’s why we are so drawn to spending time in the light? It’s just good for us!

The Living Space is brought to you by Viridian New World Glass.

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