Daylighting

Finished Interior Photos

Michael Deleon worked his magic and photographed the interior of our home before we made way for the new owners. Check out more of his work here: www.michaeldeleonphoto.com/

Shades

Our house isn’t a fish bowl anymore!  Nancy tracked down a great modern shade store online and we installed them over the past weekend.  It’s so nice to have some privacy and also cut out the sun glare early in the morning and late in the afternoon.

Most of our openings had plenty of space at the heads, however, the big sliding doors were tight with about 1-1/2” in depth.  We had thought about trying to recess the shades into a slot over the doors at one point, but it just wasn’t feasible price-wise.  In the end, they are still fairly non-obtrusive.

Here is the source:  http://www.theshadestore.com/

Interior Lighting Studies

We are now beginning to look at interior lighting schemes.  The challenge is to move beyond a sea of recessed “can” or track lights and arrive at something a bit more interesting at a reasonable price. In the quest to control energy consumption, the wisest choice would be compact fluorescent fixtures.  However, we are still having a hard time getting over their start-up behavior, light color, color rendering, and a “lack of brightness”.

There are trade-offs to think of with can light sizes too:  six inch and up are readily available and cheap.  Most smaller sizes, which are nicer and more subtle are more expensive, have limited wattage, and require more fixtures. Although low voltage would be a choice to get smaller fixtures with bright lights, we want to avoid both the cost as well as the sparkle and glare that they give off.

For more images, check out our renderings on Flickr