Award-Winning Homes: Design Trends

ABOVE: This contemporary riverside self-build, designed by Stan Bolt, incorporates many of the latest trends, including timber cladding and inside/outside living. (This project will be featured in an upcoming issue - Watch a short video about this self-build).

Schemes like The Daily Telegraph Homebuilding & Renovating Awards not only celebrate the remarkable achievements of individuals who set out on what is truly one of life’s great journeys — they are also a brilliant showcase for the very best new ideas in home design, construction and interior design.

So what are the emerging trends in the very best homes of 2009 — features that you can expect to see in many more homes in years to come and maybe your own? We look at some of the prevalent design features for the coming year...

Timber Cladding

Low-maintenance, beautiful and sustainable, it is no surprise that timber cladding is currently one of the most popular external cladding materials amongst self-builders and renovators, and one chosen by the owners of more than half of the projects shortlisted in this year’s Awards.

Timber cladding was used on new homes constructed in blockwork, timber frame and insulated concrete formwork. Timber boards were also used to re-clad the walls on several renovation projects, where its relatively thin depth makes it an ideal option.

Horizontally fixed boarding is most common: vertical boarding is perhaps less fashionable because of its association with 1970s houses. Traditional buildings tend to be clad with overlapping boards in the style of shiplap or weatherboarding, whilst single lap is favoured for a contemporary look, with either tongue-and-groove, or rebated joints.

Popular timbers include hardwoods such as oak, sweet chestnut, iroko, meranti and idigbo, and dense softwoods such as Western redcedar and Scottish and Siberian larch. Expect to pay between £80-110/m².

Flexible Living

If you are going to build a home that you plan to stay in for the rest of your life, it makes sense to take into account future needs, and this includes planning for old age. Several of this year’s shortlisted projects took the requirement of the Building Regulations Part M much further and included a bedroom and bathroom at ground floor level, or designed entirely independent accessible living accomm odation. Two owners actually included lifts to ensure access to all floors. Designing homes for flexible living also assists with another trend that has been very evident in this year’s projects: multigeneration households.

Inside/Outside Living

The garden is increasingly becoming an extension of the home, a room in its own right — with its own structure, flooring, furniture, lighting and architectural features. This is especially the case with smaller urban gardens. Many owners are redesigning them to create low-maintenance spaces that can be used all year round, using decking, paving, gravel and other aggregates with only small amounts of planting or turf. When you have small windows, no one notices the garden, but in a modern house filled with light from all that glazing, the garden is on full view and you can’t ignore it.

A feature cleverly used in some of this year’s Awards projects is the courtyard garden: a great way to bring light into a building whilst retaining privacy. A courtyard is created by wrapping rooms and/or boundary walls around a small outdoor area, which creates a private space and therein the opportunity to have very large windows, or glazed doorways, that look onto the courtyard.

Basements

Six of the projects in this year’s Awards had full or semi basements — three within new builds and three as extensions to an existing house. With property prices still relatively high in historic terms, it is a sound investment as well as a good source of extra accommodation.

When developing a sloping site that needs to be levelled out, it often makes sound financial sense to build a semi basement, set into the slope. Many self-build sites fall into this category, as developers are often reluctant to take on difficult sites. Build costs for a semi basement are not usually considerably greater than for above-ground spaces.

In high-value areas it can make financial sense to build a full basement underneath a new house, providing the value of living space exceeds the construction costs, which are around £1,650-2,650/m². Basements are ideal for games rooms, home cinemas, gyms, utility rooms and storage.

Level Thresholds

For a garden room to really function successfully, as well as look great, it also has to be linked to the flow of the room plan, and this means planning good access from key areas such as the dining and living areas. Several of the shortlisted projects had level thresholds through garden doors, continuing the same floor covering through the doorway to ensure a seamless flow of space, leading the eye beyond the glass, and thus blurring the boundary between inside and out.

Usually this feature includes a subfloor trench drain running along the line of the threshold with a slatted cover, but at least two of the shortlisted projects simply sloped the fall of the slabs away from the doors or glazing and left a row of small, narrow weep holes in the grouting between the slabs.

Woodburning Stoves

There probably wasn’t a single house on this year’s shortlist that did not include a woodburning stove. The move towards greater airtightness has all but eliminated the open fire in sustainable houses, but those who want the comfort and warmth of real flames can still achieve this with a solid fuel or woodburning stove with a balanced flue that is closed to the room — so no vents are required in the room to provide air for combustion, and no heat is lost up the chimney. Stoves are now the most fuel-efficient, and therefore cost-effective, form of room heater available. There are even cleanburning wood-fired stoves available now that can be used in smoke control areas.

Upside-Down Living

It is probably because self-builders are less risk averse that they are more willing than speculative developers to take on difficult sloping sites, and also to opt for alternative design configurations, such as upside-down living: a design solution often arrived at to suit a sloping site.

Three of this year’s shortlisted projects took the opportunity to make the most of their great views by elevating the main living spaces to the top of the house, where it also created the opportunity to make a feature of a sloping vaulted ceiling under the main roof, and to bring in light from above via rooflights or lanterns. A further five projects had living rooms above ground level, either for reasons of space efficiency or to take advantage of views.

To really make upside-down living work, it is important to have an easy way to get shopping up to the kitchen and living rooms. On a sloping site this can be achieved by having direct access into these spaces from the upper part of the site; for instance, by creating a raised walkway.

Extra-Wide Floorboards

An emerging trend in interiors seen in this year’s Awards is the use of extra-wide engineered and solid timber floorboards, some up to 450mm in width. Danish company Dinesen’s (dinesen.com) Douglas fir floorboards are so wide and long (450mm x 15m), partitions and joints are barely visible to the eye. Also check out Timber Neutral’s range of wide plank flooring (01509 812020).

Show & Working Kitchens

Over the past decade the kitchen has gradually become the heart of the home, as evidenced by the number of open plan kitchens in this year’s Awards, which incorporate open plan living spaces, informal and formal dining areas, separate walk-in larders, utility rooms and more.

With the kitchen itself now on show at the centre of this space, the design and style of the units, worktops and appliances have become a critical component in the overall interior design scheme.

In some homes in this year’s Awards, form has overtaken function — the main kitchen is primarily a showpiece, designed to be left clean and uncluttered to the extent that the actual food preparation, cooking and clearing up all takes place in a ‘working kitchen’ tucked away out of sight of guests.

See some of these trends in action...

• Timber cladding: A Contemporary Self-build in Devon
• Flexible Living: A Contemporary Family Home
• Inside/Outside Living: An Eco Modernist-style Home
• Basements: A Subterranean Self-build
• Upside-Down Living: An Energy-efficient Contemporary Self-build

Further reading:

• What Makes an Award-Winning Home?
• Find out more about how to design a house
• Find out more about designing interiors
• Find out more about the Homebuilding & Renovating Awards