Skylights: Illuminate your life, but don’t get burned

Skylights have come a long way from the days of big white acrylic domes poking up from the roof of your house like a giant skin blemish. Pretty disgusting in both imagery and reality. Some people seem to have fears surrounding skylights. I have gotten asked again and again “won’t they leak?” or “won’t they make my house hot? My answer is: Not if they’re installed properly. Like most things, it’s dependant on designer, roofer and contractor to make sure skylights are designed and installed to work optimally.

One of the goals I have for almost all of my remodel designs is daylighting – basically once the project is complete, people can live in the house without turning on a light during the day. Although this is not always possible, it is something I aspire to. Happily, I have been able to accomplish this goal frequently. .

My favorite place to start adding skylights is in hallways. A hallway is often the most dark, cramped and usually…pedestrian space in a house. The addition of a skylight or two can utterly transform the character of an otherwise unremarkable space. This will often contribute light to adjacent bedrooms, that tend to be darker. My other favorite location to place a skylight is over a kitchen island. If there is no island then just centering the opening in the middle of kitchen works as well. This brings lots of natural light to the most used workspace, providing much needed illumination to the surrounding kitchen. Kitchens often have a small windows anyway, to allow for more cabinets and a skylight can make up for the deficiency of natural light.

Skylights can be problematic. There really can be too much light, heat, or a harsh sun track across a space. This can be hard on the eyes and even fade interior finishes and furnishings. Much has been done with glass and shades in high quality skylights to counteract many of these problems. This is a good start, but it still falls to the designer of the space to understand and evaluate several considerations. In my opinion the ideal skylight design, is one that provides lots of reflected, ambient light, but essentially never allows the sun to shine right in. A skylight “chase” is the light well that run through an attic between a ceiling and a roof opening. If it is tall enough, these chase walls can create important surfaces to block and reflect sunlight. Sometimes this is impossible, so we must resort to shades that can block virtually all the light, allowing a skylight where they would otherwise be impractical. Fortunately the top manufacturers understand this, and recently invented solar powered remote control shades for just such locations. This allows you to open the shade just a crack or wide open depending on the situation.

The most important considerations affecting skylight function are: roof orientation, distance from roof to ceiling surface, roof aperture, ceiling aperture, and chase shape. Sound complicated? It can be, but by managing these factors I can usually tailor the skylight to provide adequate light without overdoing it.

The spaces I design never look like a skylight manufacturers brochures, and for good reason. Advertisments always seem to show multiple large skylights in a space, recommending an almost greenhouse approach. Its like parking your car in the sun, but hoping it will remain cool. Not likely! I have been told that skylights admit about 3 times as much light as and equal sized window. I’ve never seen any scientific data on this, but it seems like a reasonable rule of thumb in practice.

Sometimes I encounter locations in a house where traditional skylights are just not possible. Usually the combination of roof configuration, and wall locations below won’t allow enough room to make it work. Fortunately that situations is uncommon, but there are other options. In recent years tube skylights have become a popular alternative to traditional “built” skylights. I think there is a place for both, in the constellation of possibilities. Admittedly, I’m a bit of a snob where skylights are concerned. In general I don’t like the look of tube skylights, but they do meet my ideal criteria, and they are substantially cheaper. In a pinch, I’d opt for tube skylights, but generally I only spec them in secondary spaces. I think they are perfect for closets, laundry rooms, and similar non public spaces. In some circumstances I’d also put them in interior baths and even occasionally in a bedroom. Faced with a choice between a tube, or no skylight at all, I’ll take the tubes every time, even if they do lack architectural interest. I’ll discuss these more in a later post.

I once did a large remodel design, nearly a mansion. I designed a wide and rather long hallway accessing bedrooms; not so unusual. I arched the ceiling of the hallway, making it about 10 feet tall. It would be a bit like a tunnel running from the entry, back to the bedroom area. The final thing I did was to add three skylights in the hallway at regular intervals so that they would cut through the arching ceiling. This reinforced the arched aspect, by creating many curving edges where the skylight openings intersected the arched ceiling. This also took advantage of the natural perspective in the space. At one point while still working on the plans, the owner came to me and said they had decided to eliminate the skylights to save cost, and use artificial lighting instead. I said to the owner (and I quote) “I beg you not to do this” because I knew what a loss to the design that would represent. After some discussion she changed her mind, and the skylights was installed as designed.

After she had lived the the completed home for a while, she called me and confessed that the hallway had become her favorite space in the house! A hallway! This demonstrates the power of skylights, properly designed and placed. She never has to turn a light on in that space while the sun is up. That home truly fulfilled the potential for leveraging what skylights have to offer in terms of natural illumination and style.

This is the client's favorite room in her house.
Click for a larger picture

10 square feet of “slop”, or why I don’t use every last inch!

Very early in my design career I had the occasion to design for a Silicon Valley engineer, and we ended up in a discussion regarding accuracy. Here was a fellow accustomed to working in an accuracy increment of mils, or thinking in terms of angstroms. Now I had to explain why a quarter of an inch is an acceptable level of accuracy in construction. He was pretty incredulous. As I recall his exact words were ”Wow, that’s pretty gross.” Like most really smart people, after a bit of additional information, he was resolved to the idea that the addition to his house was not going to be constructed to the tolerances of a piano. In this same vein I had client, ( I’ve had several, actually ) who wanted to build every possible square foot on their property to maximize their R.O.I. This requirement often caused unintended consequences.

Quite a while back I came to realize that houses are not machine parts and that that level of accuracy can actually be a dangerous gambit, and sometimes will turn on you and bite you in the hind end. So back to the client who wanted every square inch: I generally followed that instruction, being pushed and cajoled along the way. When the plans were submitted, It became clear to me that the city considered this sort of thing a challenge, and made it their business to make me pay for my impudence. I had to demonstrate that the house complied with their regulations. I was told that the dimensions on the plans I had so carefully developed and groomed where not the “real” dimensions. I was not allowed to figure my floor areas using measurement to the industry standard “face of stud, or face of concrete.” Oh no….I had to figure the dimensions to the exterior face of the stucco, (“including paint”.) This meant that my whole addition “grew” by the thickness of the stucco and layer of plywood sheathing that was over those studs, that I had so carefully dimensioned to. Believe me, this is more space than you might imagine.

Yikes!! This meant that my tail was firmly in a wringer, and the smiling fellow behind the counter at the Planning Department was really going to enjoy turning the crank a bit. I will not recount here, the architectural and mathematical modifications, or sleight of hand, that I employed to extract my smarting appendage. Suffice it to say, that sometimes a computer can be a powerful ally when faced with such a situation. The lesson that I learned is this: You better put aside a little bit of reserve. Don’t use every square inch, or design each space down to the gnat’s eyelash, ‘cause if you do, there will be some person with the ability to make you miserable, pointing at that carefully crafted element, just itching to “turn the crank” a bit!

This principle applies not only to floor area, but pretty much to every aspect of space planning. Houses, as I stated before, are not machine parts. Often existing walls are neither square nor plumb. Very often, the dimensions that was considered adequate in the past, no longer meets the code or ordinance that will be employed to evaluate your design. So now, I generally allow a
minimum of 10 square feet of “latitude” (see “slop”) when figuring my floor areas.When space planning especially tight areas like bathrooms I provide an inch or more of additional space over the “minimum requirement” This allows some wiggle room for the fellows with tapes and hammers on their belt. They will appreciate it. This a hidden gift to them, but more especially to the owner, and myself, because we won’t get that phone call, asking where to get that extra space they need to make it all work, when they encounter the unexpected.

One last thought: It is far better to take a little bit of space out of a big room, to make a small room work better. You will never miss that space in the big room, and in the small room it can make a world of difference.

Collaborative design: Why I’m a proponent.

Almost 40 years ago, when I started in the field of residential design almost everyone seemed to
follow a similar process:

● Gather information
● Create 3 design schemes
● Present 3 design schemes
● Throw out 1
● Combine the parts of the other 2 designs that the client liked into one design
● Present the new revised design again
● … wash, rinse, repeat. …

Whew, I’m glad that’s done! I’m getting tired just thinking about all that back and forth!! Hope I didn’t lose you in the middle of that.
As a designer with decades of experience having developed hundreds of remodel designs over the years, I could gather information and go back to my office and develop a design that I think is good and works well, but this really misses the point. That would be designing for myself, in a vacuum and devoid of many critical considerations I might never discover without talking to you, and besides, as we all know vacuums suck.
What I’ve learned is the old process sorely lacked specific input from the client, the people who actually were going to live in the house! Today we cut through most of the back and forth by developing understanding of specific wants and goals as soon as possible in the process. I’ve discovered the best way to do this is by having a conversation, and fostering this collaboration while actually sketching a proposed design.
This requires a dialog between client and designer, and allows us both to explore “what if?” scenarios. The client is encouraged to say: “yes I like that”, or “no, I don’t like that” and ask “what if we did this?” and get an immediate response and explanations. This helps steer the design in real time, and prevents me as a designer from chasing concepts that you would not find acceptable. Most people have a pretty good understanding of what they would like, most just don’t know how to get from here to there. The result of this collaboration is a tailored design that you like and understand because you have been engaged in the process of creating it from the very beginning.
The point is this: I am designing for you, not someone else. Each person or family has an entirely different set of experiences, needs, aspirations and requirements. Yes, there is plenty of commonality between what most people want, but it is the differences that make each design opportunity unique!If you are looking for a “Starchitect” to tell you “what to want”, I am probably not your guy. If you want someone to partner with, to collaborate on an amazing design; now we’re talking!

Integrated Plans: WAIT! That beam shouldn’t be there!

project management services campbell

During my near 40 year tenure in the remodeling design field, with few exceptions, have pretty much always draw my plan documents in the same way. That is to say, we create a integrated
set of plan documents. What does this mean? Taking a page from the current lexicon my plans are inclusive rather than exclusive.

The main idea is this: in very large projects, big box stores, strip malls etc. the architectural information and the structural information are created by two entirely different professions. The
architect will create the building floor plan and exterior and interior plans. In short, how the building is to appear. The engineer will create calculations and structural plans to show how all
the various beams, posts, and structural elements will fit together so it stands up. Two different sets of information!

Next time you go to a Costco or Walmart, take a few moments and look up. That vast network trusses and beams were the work of an engineer. The engineer figured out all the structural
loads that the building itself created, and also calculated for other non building loads, such as wind, earthquakes and the like. The architect figured out the floor plans where the bathrooms,
offices, skylights and and support post would be etc. This is gross oversimplification, but you get the idea. In most stores like Target or Nordstrom all that structural work is concealed behind
a dropped ceiling.

So why all the explanation, what’s the point?? The point is that the plan documents we create integrate both the structural and architectural into a single coordinated set of documents. That is
to say there is a much tighter integration between the architectural and structural information. This occurs because both are being drawn by the same person. This prevents that necessary
beam (mentioned above) from passing through some dramatic open space that was intended. It’s really pretty counter intuitive, but wood framed houses are surprisingly complex and nuanced,
when compared to those huge commercial boxes. Consider this intricacy of structural elements. Now demolish part of it, and put it back together in an entirely different way. You can
imagine the potential for conflicts between the structural and architectural information. Not all designers create their documents in this way. We do, and thats why.

Remodel design 101: Taking the long view

When my wife and I had our first child, like most parents we were completely absorbed in this incredible little angel we had. To that end, we were willing to do almost anything to insure our babies well being and happiness! Would any parent want less than this? Not likely. We went out and bought furniture, toys, and books to create the perfect nursery. It was wondrous, and we basked in it.

Now that same precious “bundle of joy”, stands a half a head taller than me, and outweighs me by a fair margin, and has more facial hair than I do. The difficult thing to convey, is how quickly this all came to pass. One day a squirming cherub faced infant in my arms, the next day a toddler, a week later, high school….. all just that fast!! Really, I’m not kidding one iota! Don’t believe me? Well, just you wait and see…

An early client I worked for had two young daughters, probably 4 and 7 years old. My own son was about 4, and I have a picture of him standing in front of their house. I had taken him with me when I tape and photoed (He was bored silly, and I did not repeat it.)

We designed a nice but straight forward 2nd floor on the house. Two bedrooms, a bath, plenty of closet space, and a common area for study and hang out space. Those two little girls are grown women now, college graduates both, with their own families.

I did not know it when I designed that remodel to their home, that those two little girls would grow up in those rooms till they moved out on their own. It’s kind of humbling really, realizing that the decisions that we make at the design table have such long lasting implications.

These are the kinds of considerations that should inform our decision making when we design a remodel. Time passes so quickly, and we better get it right, because it’s going to be that way for a long time. That same family was a repeat client. After about 4 years I was invited back. We expanded the master bedroom suite, pushed out the family room and moved and remodeled the kitchen. They still live in the home that we created together. They are three generations now, rather than a young family…. It’s grandma and grandpa’s house now… and what could be more important than that?