Warming your house for winter
How do you make the most of the light during the cooler months while keeping your home cosy and warm?
It all started with a sleepout/garage/office being built at the top of the driveway… With a growing business and the need for more space, Andrew and Tanya Wood had upsized to a spacious home on Auckland’s fringes and were busy adding a smaller standalone office-come-accomodation block.
Like so many properties outside the heart of the city, the first thing you notice is the space. The grounds give the feeling of tranquillity and separation from the stresses of a busy workday. It’s the kind of place where you can arrive and heave a sigh of relief – you’re home.
On entering the house, it’s impossible not to notice the wonderful floor-to-ceiling windows. As you look out at the views, it’s clear this house encapsulates the notion of bringing the outside in. This makes the most of the light but can also make the house feel cold.
The Woods bought their home with its existing blinds: stained cedar Venetians (with 60mm blades), which were very much in keeping with the trends at the time the house was built in the mid 1990s.
However, Tanya and Andrew’s immediate need was to choose window treatments for the new sleepout/garage/office being built at the top of their driveway. This new build was taking shape, and because it was designed to look like a smaller version of the main house, the couple were keen for it to be furnished in a similar style.
Initially, Brightshine was only going to fit the sleepout but the more we discussed it, the more Tanya and Andrew fell in love with the concept of shutters throughout both dwellings. Both practical and stylistic considerations had to be taken into account when coming up with a design solution that would suit both the home’s super-sized windows and the more modest proportions of the sleepout.
Without double glazing on the main home’s windows, there was a real need to retain heat over the winter. The existing Venetians worked from a practical point of view, as they gave control over the sun’s glare in the afternoon, but they were desperately in need of modernising. The dark stain used on the louvres made the rooms feel small and, given that the blinds covered large floor-to-ceiling expanses, they also made the spaces feel very busy. Due to the size of the windows, curtains would not have been a good option: they would have closed the rooms in, there was no space for them to gather, and they would have been very heavy to move.
THE BRIGHTSHINE SOLUTION
Shutters were the answer: beautiful, thick 89mm louvres to adorn the house’s windows, modernise the look and provide some muchneeded insulation around the house.
At Brightshine, we offer shutters in a choice of 64mm, 76mm and 89mm louvres. The bigger