If you’ve never designed a home before, windows might be one of those things that you assume just sort of fall into place once you’ve finalized the structural layout, but you couldn’t be further from the truth.
Window placement, size, and style play a major role in providing a cohesive design and can dramatically change the way that your home looks and feels. Natural light has been proven to be important for our health and well-being, exposure to sunlight during the day can help us sleep better at night, and on the most basic terms of home building, using windows in the right way can cut costs when it comes to using electrical lights and air conditioning. For all of these reasons, plus the fact that you want your home to be a stunning, warm, and comfortable place to spend your days and nights, choosing the right windows to place throughout your home is an incredibly important topic to ponder.
Let’s start the discussion with a crowd favorite: picture windows. For good reason these are a crowd favorite at Schumacher Homes as our customers love basking in the glow of their yards and neighborhoods. A picture window is a large pane of glass that allows for an unobstructed view of your surroundings. They create a very open feeling to a room, bringing light and levity to what might otherwise feel a bit closed. The substantial, clear glass can let you enjoy views of your property from the living room in a way that feels almost like you are a part of the outdoor environment, rather than simply viewing things from the comfort of your couch or dining room table. Whether your home is situated on a rural plot and you love the idea of looking out at the trees and blossoming flowers in the spring time or you are nestled comfortably in a more urban neighborhood and you want to look out at the snow covered sidewalks and Christmas lights each winter, picture windows can be the answer.
For those looking for options in a tall, grand room, you may want to think about transom windows. These are smaller paned windows that can be added above the main window to emphasize the volume in a room. You can see an example of both picture windows and transform windows in the image here and instantly gather how these simple options can create a truly expansive feel to your living space, adding sweeping views and dazzling natural light.
It's easy to forget about the little rooms when it comes to placing windows throughout your home plan, but any of our New Home Consultants will remind you, having natural light in places like the laundry room or a guest bathroom are equally important to building a comfy, charming home. Beyond the obvious need for bright light when you’re folding clothes or washing your dog, having that feeling of openness in your more compact rooms can make it far more pleasurable to spend time there; and after all, as much as we don’t want to spend time on our daily chores, we end up using those spaces quite a bit more than we’d think.
We can all get locked into blueprints and square footage when we’re working on our new home design, but it’s equally important to think about the interior design, with utmost importance on furniture. Sure, the living room might be a square with a perfectly symmetrical location where you think the windows should go, but where are you planning on putting your furniture? Will you have an L-shaped couch? Are you going to have multiple smaller couches accented with lounge chairs? Will they be pushed back against the wall or floating in the middle of the room? These same sort of questions apply to a bedroom, dining room, office, or any other space that will be using large pieces of furniture as a focal point. As the example photo here portrays, it isn’t always best to center windows in a room that has a limited amount of wall space to place your bed. It might be more ideal to move the windows into the corners of the room, allowing more flexibility for the furniture layout so that the desk can get window light while the bed can rest cozily against a decorated wall. Sure, furniture layout can change as new pieces come and go, but having a basic layout in mind is very useful during the planning stage.
As you can see, there is quite a bit of thought that should go into the windows for your home, be it a desire for panoramic views, a need to fit a favorite piece of furniture in a specific place, or just the desire for natural light and openness in every nook of your new home. The New Home Consultants at Schumacher Homes will help lead you through the decision process when you get to this point of your new home design and will happily give you some ideas that are uniquely tailored to your plot of land and floor plan.
About Schumacher Homes
Schumacher Homes, based in Canton, Ohio, is America’s largest custom homebuilder, with operations in 32 markets in 14 states across the country. The National Housing Quality award winning company has built over 20,000 homes, customized to fit each family’s lifestyle, since its founding by Paul Schumacher in 1992. Schumacher Homes takes each customer’s inspiration and gives it a home. Each Schumacher Homes location includes a one-stop shopping design studio and model homes displaying the latest in architectural and product trends. Stop in today, be inspired and receive your no obligation price quote.