Love Your Home by Dermot Bannon – Bringing the Outside In

Are you thinking of making some changes to your living space? Or have you fallen out of love with your home? With Dermot Bannon’s Love Your Home the secrets to a successful space are no longer a secret. This book proves that it’s perfectly feasible to love your home. Dermot knows how good design can be life changing.

In Love Your Home Dermot teaches you how to understand the fundamentals of design – the importance of light, function, proportion and connectivity. To help you rekindle the romance or begin a dalliance with your home we’ve included a snapshot of the book’s first chapter Bringing the Outside In. Perfect if you are planning to make changes this summer!

Bringing the Outside In

Connections

We all have a fundamental need to connect with nature. People are so rooted in the outdoors that rooms without a view feel like prisons to us. When we spend a lot of time in a space, we need to be able to refresh ourselves by looking out at a world that is different to the one we are in. And that is why homes must connect to, and have some sort of view of, the outdoors. Architects will spend time on a site honing in on factors such as views and connections to outside spaces that can influence the design. Where someone else might just see a boring field, an architect could see a hill, a distant church spire or one simple tree. When considering a home and its views, you create a fingerprint of the house, a design that can only work in that spot. For example, when I was designing my cousin’s house we climbed up on the scaffolding to find that at a certain point, we could see a church spire. So we turned the stairs around, and now when people reach the landing, they can see that spire.

Inside Out

We often think of buildings as entities that turn inwards, and yet it is so important to orientate them to the exterior. There are many ways of doing this, including the addition of balconies and terraces and well-designed glass openings.

Windows on the World

One way to improve the link between the inside and outside is to increase the size of windows. If money is tight, then the best option is probably to lower them – standard windows are usually about 2 or 3 feet off the ground – because it doesn’t involve complex structural work. You can take out the blockwork beneath a window knowing that it is supported from above. Making windows wider could involve more structural work, unless the structural lintel is wider than the existing window.

Wonder Wall

If you have a good outside space, there is nothing nicer than a large glazed wall. People still worry about privacy, but there are many ways around this, including having the glazing at the back of the house (assuming it works with the orientation). As a general rule, when connecting to the exterior in this way, the size of the glazing should be at least the equivalent of 25 per cent of the floor area in the room, and up to about 50 per cent. Sometimes a room is too open, which is why there is an upper limit to the size of glass. Having said that, if you are using the glazed wall in a room that you are connecting to another room that has little or no glass, then you can add its floor space into the calculation.

We hope you enjoyed this snapshot of how to bring the outside inside your home. Love your Home is available on our website and in all good book stores.

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The Author

Dermot Bannon is the leading voice in modern Irish architectural design. He has hosted the Room to Improve’ TV series for eight seasons, and has helped transform the homes and lives of hundreds of clients. He lives in Drumcondra with his wife and three children.

Follow @DermotBannon on Twitter and visit his website to keep up to date.