Designing for Natural Light, Room by Room

Light comes before furniture

Most interior decisions get made after the architecture is fixed — but light has to be considered earlier than that, because it's shaped as much by window placement and orientation as by anything we do inside. Where we can influence it, we try to give every room at least one source of soft, indirect daylight, not just a single hard beam that moves across the floor over the course of a day.

Bedrooms get treated differently from living spaces. We tend to soften morning light in bedrooms so it doesn't dictate the household's wake time, while pushing living and dining areas toward as much natural light as the site allows, since those are the rooms meant to feel open during the day.

Artificial lighting is designed as a continuation of that plan, not a replacement for it — layered, warm, and mostly indirect, so a room still feels considered after the sun goes down.