When Leisa and Brett Mersch went looking for a new home where they could raise their growing family, a bright, sunlit place brimming with natural light placed high on their list of priorities.
“We had a home that was a small ranch without many windows that just felt depressing and claustrophobic,” Leisa Mersch recalled. “We wanted a layout where there were multiple windows in each room . . . to enjoy feeling that you’re outside, but with the comforts of being inside.”
They found what they were after in the Merevale model at Windsor Pointe in Sugar Grove, a layout that offers an all-seasons room featuring three walls of glass.
Come June, when they move in, the Merschs will be savoring an outlook made sunnier by their light-filled home.
“It kind of brightens up your attitude and lifestyle,” Leisa Mersch said.
Plenty of natural light is a feature most home buyers seek these days, and architects and builders are growing more adept at letting the sun shine in.
They have received a big assist from bright ideas in window technology that enable more daylight to enter without negatively affecting energy efficiency, said Al Bloom, president of Bloom and Fiorino Architects Inc., Oak Brook.
Bloom recalled that during the energy crisis of the 1970s, many architects actually sought to reduce the amount of light entering homes, to save energy. But that was before products like Low-E (low emittance) window coatings and tinted windows were perfected.
“Now the products available from window manufacturers help mitigate heat gain and loss,” he said. “The use of windows from a design standpoint has become much more prevalent.”
Jim Vanderploeg, vice-president of contracts and architecture at Palatine’s Concord Homes, agrees. He sees builders turning to higher quality windows, such as those using heat transfer-reducing Argon gas between panes of glass for greater energy efficiency.
The higher ceilings in today’s designs have also helped make homes brighter. High ceilings provide better spatial context, while also allowing windows to be heightened. The result: deeper windows that bring more light into rooms while also creating a more dramatic effect, Bloom said.
For those who love natural light, all-season rooms and sunrooms represent a particularly alluring concept. Both are attracting buyers like the Merschs at Windsor Pointe, said Pam Schawel, director of sales and marketing with Wiseman-Hughes Enterprises in Wheaton, a builder of semi-custom homes. The more natural light that pours into a home, the better the psychological effect on its inhabitants, reports Schawel.
“The light and bright that flows in through the glass creates a more positive attitude and makes people a little happier,” she said. “It’s inviting the outdoors into your home, which people just love.”
Schawel said that more than 40 percent of buyers are choosing the option of the all-season room, which features three sides of glass and can be filled with casual seating, plants and flowers.
Condominium designs are also offering a welcoming brightness. An example is Church Street Station, a 17-story building just starting construction in downtown Evanston.
In masonry buildings, windows commonly stop short of the floor and ceiling, says Tim Anderson, president of Northfield’s Focus Development, the builder. But because Church Street Station is a “poured-in-place” concrete building, the structure can offer floor-to-ceiling glass.
Light penetrates deeply
“You have light coming all the way down to the floor, reflecting off both the floor and the ceiling,” Anderson said.
“This helps light penetrate deeper into the living space . . . It’s very important in condominiums, because you want to create a sense of spaciousness.”
Dearborn Tower, a conversion of an old industrial building at 1530 South State St. in Chicago’s South Loop, was designed for cold storage.
That meant the building had no natural light in its first incarnation, said principal Keith Giles of Chicago’s Frankel and Giles Real Estate.
It was constructed of concrete columns and floors, with brick infill between columns. Plaster and cork were used on the interior walls, to help insulate. the building.
“We took out the brick and recessed the windows behind terraces, so all the units have floor-to-ceiling windows that are the width of the unit,” Giles said. “Each of the corner units has over 1,000 square feet of windows.”
Views cinch purchase
Peter Jannotta, who is moving into a two-bedroom loft at Dearborn Tower, said the light and the views cinched his decision to buy.
“It’s pretty much two walls of glass, floor to ceiling, on the north and east sides,” he said. “It makes it feel like you have more space than is actually there, with all the glass. The light adds to the open feeling.”
In houses, basements, too, have become beneficiaries of more natural light.
Traditionally used as storage spaces or workshops by many homeowners, basements have taken on more functional roles, for entertaining or children’s play areas. Accordingly, larger windows are replacing the old-style basement windows that measured a foot deep and two feet wide.
Many basement windows now extend four feet in width and four or five feet in depth. “In some cases, we’re ganging the windows, putting two or three in a row to really add light into the basement,” architect Bloom reported.
In addition to getting bigger, basement windows are going upscale, Vanderploeg said.
In contrast to the old, uninsulated “hopper-type” aluminum windows, basement windows now tend to be vinyl with insulated glass, to reduce seasonal heat gain and loss through the larger spaces.
Another creative, light-adding feature is the direct-vent or non-vent, pre-fabricated fireplace, which eliminates the need for a flue housed in a vertical chase, Vanderploeg said. This allows windows to be placed where they’ve never been before: above the fireplace mantel.
Skylights are yet another feature that can make a home brighter.
“The use of a skylight in an internal bathroom allows a room that wouldn’t normally get light to be a little sunnier,” Bloom said. “They’ve been successful in opening the home to the sky.”
Architects are also incorporating landscape and design features to reap prime benefit from window placement. For instance, windows on a home’s west side can be shaded by overhangs or sunscreen devices that reduce or block sunlight in summer.
Trees help two ways
Deciduous trees that shade the house in summer but shed leaves in autumn can be planted outside those windows to allow more warming sun to penetrate in winter, when it’s most needed, Bloom said.
At Holden Park in Matteson, single-family and townhouses are designed to offer abundant natural light. Both feature nine-foot ceilings on the first floor, allowing for transom windows above the regular windows.
“What that gives you is an extra foot of glass,” said John Robnett, sales manager for Chicago’s Legacy Development Group, the builder of Holden Park.
Some models also offer English basements, whose above-ground windows deliver a lot more light than traditional well windows. Skylights above master bedrooms and bathrooms are an option on seven of the eight models. And the Prairiehill townhome model features a two-story family room, with windows on both floors.
“So you have all that extra light from the volume of the second floor,” Robnett said.
Another builder offering numerous light-filled floor plans is Buffalo Grove-based Zale Homes. Its Baxter and Carrington models feature bedrooms with windows on either side of the bed and a long window above the bed.
Zale’s Muirfield series, available at Royal Troon at Gregg’s Landing in Vernon Hills and Sandringham in Rolling Meadows, offers two-story foyers and living rooms, as well as family rooms that boast between six and 10 windows each.
One model, the Waldorf, features windows that extend from the ceiling almost to the floor on both the front and side walls, said manager of design services Jan Roberts.
“People really love that look,” she added. “It makes all the materials in their home, including ceramics, marbles or hardwood, look much, much better with the natural light coming in. The natural light makes it look so much larger.”
