Unless we demand better. Our houses won’t be built better.

Image source from Pinterest all other details unknown and not listed from the source.

I wanted to reflect on a passage in the book "If Women Rose Rooted" by Sharon Blackie, about her friend Karen who aids people to feel whole and understood, her and her husband’s business is called "the hearing voices network" based in Scotland, she reflects on how disconnected we have become as individuals from nature and as a result our mental health suffers. Our homes are becoming larger, the land is getting smaller and the concept of a backyard is being long forgotten. I also reflected on the fact that houses are being built to "look good" with not much consideration for there construction to minimise the effect of our power consumption to heat and cool our homes and ultimately to save more money on lowering our power bills.

It is possible to have both a home that looks good and uses less power to heat and cool the home and these two ideas are not mutually exclusive. 

Here is how. The simple knowledge of double glazing north-west facing windows for example or having windows directly adjacent to one another located southwesterly, cools down the home in extreme heat to take advantage of the inevitable cool change that eventually arrives. Having insulation within the walls, floors and ceilings of the home, on top of the reflective foil to properly insulate the home stops extreme heat transfer during the summer and heat escaping in winter. Ensure you know what the documented R. value of the insulation is on the architectural plans of your home and that you have signed off on to be built. The R. value measures the performance of the insulation in the home and there a total of 8 climate zones in Australia and the insulated R. rating should suit the climate zone that you live in. With a little bit of research, it is easy to find otherwise consult a professional. Ensure you have eaves on the home particularly the hottest side of the home facing the northwest at the very least. This ensures the summer heat stays out and the winter sun comes in through your windows. Did you know the sun angles differently in summer and winter so having the right projection of eaves on your home keeps the home cooler in extreme heat? Pretty cool if you ask me. Lastly having curtains instead of blinds is so simple, it keeps the heat in the home during winter and the sun out during summer. Most of our home’s heat is lost through windows during winter and most of the home is heated up during summer through our windows.

In conclusion, invest in your windows and ask questions about double glazing, insulation, and eaves in your home when building. 

Another simple tip is having a fan in your roof to pull the hot air out during summer to keep the roof and subsequently, the house cooler which reduces the load on your air conditioning system and is super affordable. A professional will need to calculate the number of fans required for the area of your roof for this operation to act efficiently but is not a costly addition.  

Interior Design by Interior Flow & Photography by Dylan Lark

Consider …..

How you might incorporate a small reflective garden in your new home and plants inside to connect, ground, and work unknowingly on your mental health. Invest in a landscape designer to complete a garden design to provide a plant list and a planting map to do it yourself for a professional approach and optimum results so that the exercise is affordable. Well-considered design with the right plants for the right areas and the knowledge of how to make a garden interesting with the consideration of the background, middle ground, and foreground are a worthwhile investment and you will reap the rewards for years to come as you observe its cyclical growth throughout the seasons and may even reflect on your own cyclical growth along side your gardens.

I hope that you have found this short excerpt to be helpful in the journey to building your own home for not just your future but the future of our planet and the future generations to come after us.

Note: Cover image photography by Olivia Calder

Krystal Sagona

With over 20 years of experience as a residential & commercial Interior Designer, Krystal has built a strong reputation in the design industry. Award winning designer and highly intuitively creative, Krystal has the innate ability to understand and deliver your creative brief. Krystal is a registered Draftsperson with the Victorian Building Board and a qualified Feng Shui consultant with the AFSC (Association of Feng Shui Consultants) International.