Natural Light

We have recently been thinking about moving to a new place in London - finding somewhere with a bit more space and ideally a home office.

We found somewhere last week that looked as if it could be quite good. It was well-located in terms of public transport, nursery and schools. It was a good size and on a nice, tidy, quiet street. But, it needed a LOT of work.

I was quite excited about it for a few days - pinning hundreds of images of kitchens and bathrooms and looking at different tile and flooring options. We have never renovated before so I wanted to try and get a realistic idea of costs. After more thought and looking at all the areas where the costs could potentially mount up we decided that the place required too much structural work for it to be a good buy for us. Perhaps the biggest killer of the idea though was the lack of natural light downstairs.

We once rented a lower ground (basement) flat in Islington for six months and we swore that we would never do that again. It was in a year that London had a beautiful hot summer and it was so depressing to get home and go down the stairs from street level into our little flat. There was a small courtyard 'garden' off the bedroom, but the walls were so high that it was only when the sun was directly above that you saw it - kind of like being at the bottom of  a well I guess!

With most successful renovations that you see you often learn that the buyer said they thought the place had 'good bones' and/or 'good light' - the place that we were looking at didn't really have either of these things!

Houses and baches in New Zealand are now often designed with large glass 'walls', blurring the boundary between indoor and outdoor living.

Fearon Hay Architects often design buildings in this style. The example pictured below is Cliff House.

This house, largely designed by Warrick Weber and known as Jagged Edge, overlooks Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown.

As a rule, I love the trend for huge panes of glass - the more light the better (as long as there are black out curtains in the bedrooms). Even better for me, is to be in a climate where you don't even need windows and the place is open to the elements.

This style of building differs greatly from the typical places you find in Europe with the small windows and shutters. But, at the same time there is something magical about arriving into a cool dark house in Italy and throwing open the shutters to discover a view like this (photo taken by me back in 2009 from an apartment in Marmorata on the Amalfi Coast, Italy).

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