Delicate Details
New Construction
Tour the Light-Filled Modern Farmhouse Home of a Happy Family
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An ode to cohesive style and holistic design choices.
Whenever a designer is brought into plans for a tight lot custom home project, it can be something of a complicated story.
Yet the narrative of this house feels especially cohesive—and not just because of how well the residence fits in its inviting wooded Northwest setting. Flat paneling and lap siding complement wood porch columns and a metal standing seam roof.
Set amid the trees on a flag lot, this family home blends a modern farmhouse aesthetic with clean-edged design elements and lots of windows for an abundance of natural light without compromising optimum privacy.
Lighting affects a room's mood. This family home was designed to be bright and airy by installing windows wherever possible. Mercury glass pendants accent a white cabinet kitchen. A custom-framed window above the bathroom vanity mirror offers natural light. Even on cloudy days, the primary bedroom closet and bathroom skylights brighten dark interiors, improving mood, happiness, and productivity.
Even with the best of intentions, construction realities can necessitate difficult design decisions. You don't always have choices where your utilities go, as was the case with this house. A gray meter box is visible against the light siding just below the house numbers on the front exterior.
From a pure design standpoint, you should position that elsewhere. However, these things can occur in a home plan and remain for a reason. By placing it near the garage, it avoided sharing a wall with any living space -- an important move from a holistic standpoint. Plus, modifying the plans to relocate it required a costly investment that wasn’t in the budget.
This is where a designer comes in: By making holistic design decisions based on cost-benefit tradeoffs and mitigating the effects with simple solutions. The meter box stayed because the client concluded it wasn't worth the investment to move it.
Pragmatism sometimes triumphs over perfection, and simple foundation plantings conceal it well. Today, the expanding tree blocks it from view completely. Unless pointed out, you might not have even noticed it at first glance, behind even the initial planting. These are the things a designer won't miss and can help you plan to avoid where possible to make the best decisions you can when choice is limited.
Working with a designer from the beginning helps avoid problems with utility placement that could affect health as well as aesthetics. Modern life is full of brain-damaging electromagnetic frequency waves (EMFs). Sleeping on a wall shared with a smart meter like this one can cause exposure to high EMF levels. Similarly, avoid positioning your headboard against a refrigerator wall because they also release high levels of EMFs.
A designer can improve how everything fits together in your dream home from aesthetics and functionality to the choices that support your family’s holistic health.