How to design a luxury environmentally friendly home
Everyone dreams of building their ideal home, a place of elegance and longevity. Many envision houses fit for raising families or turning a nice profit within 10 years. Regardless of intent, a common thread holds true: homes must be designed and constructed to fit the reality of their environment.
Severe weather patterns are on the rise and stories of climate change continue to dominate the news. When designing your next luxury house, serve both the planet and yourself by building an environmentally friendly home.
Choosing green building materials
You can begin serving the environment and reducing the pressures on your budget right at the foundational level with green home design. While concrete has long been a go-to building material for many homes, hemp provides an intriguing solution.
Called hempcrete, this substance is non-toxic, mold resistant and sustainable, according to the National Hemp Association. Unlike traditional building materials, which must be taken from forests or other delicate ecosystems, hemp can be grown to maturity every four months. And the National Hemp Association asserted that one acre of hemp provides as much building material as four acres of forest.
While the material takes longer to cure, providers have found a workaround. Ready-to-use bricks are created ahead of time, allowing for rapid installation. According to Mother Earth News, hemp has been popular in Europe for decades but is only now making its way to the states due to the cultural stigma. Hemp is an excellent material to use in any green home design project.
Thinking outside the box with construction creativity
When designing a luxury home, the last thing you want is a generic mcmansion that will blend in with the crowd. That doesn't communicate class or prestige. Every homeowner wants a feature, however subtle, to offset his or her home from the rest. Green home design brings an easy and innovative solution: using recycled materials.
Many perfectly sound structural supplements are tossed away without thought. As Green Home Building pointed out, wheel frames can make for attractive and unique windows, perfect for outlining a personal gym or garage. Even unused pieces from other construction sites can be used at reduced costs. Another homeowner's finickiness can be your gain, and the environment benefits from your thoughtful diligence.
Maintaining luxury while preserving the environment
At the end of the day, you're building a luxury home and you want it to look the part. There is a belief that recycled construction materials lack the prestige of the new. This is false, as this kitchen highlighted in Trends showcases.
When speaking on her green home design, architect Rebecca Caldwell stated "The rugged portal frame with expressed steel connections and the second hand bricks also resulted in a semi-industrial aesthetic on the interior. And we looked to extend this semi-industrial feel to the kitchen where the brick wall becomes the splashback and the tall wall cabinets are in matt black."
Continued thoughtfulness allowed for the creation of a unique table, one made from recycled oak, that combined dining with multi-use functionality. Overall, a kitchen full of personality was created and the homeowner saved on the reduced costs of materials.
The right recycled furniture, walling or ceiling material will create a one-of-a-kind environment that will communicate your personality more fully to your guests and anyone else in the home. Environmentally friendly home design brings out stronger homes by encouraging thought and innovation.
Green home design has been the rage in many countries in western Europe for some time now. Stay at the height of cutting edge fashion by creating your new luxury home with the environment in mind.