Potential home builders today face the daunting task of designing and furnishing their dream house. Often, however, people tend to overlook the qualities that make a home a pleasant environment: the two factors of light and warmth. Here is a brief highlight of these two basic needs that should serve you well when thinking about an environmentally friendly home design for your family.

Lighting

It's well known that light makes a space feel larger, more open and more comfortable. As obvious as it is, scientific research has pointed out time and time again that lighting is essential to our productivity and alertness.

Natural light

Studies of natural VS artificial lighting have compared the effects these types of lighting have on people. The people who receive more daylight have been found to be more alert and productive for longer. This is related to the level of cortisol present in the human body — the same chemical that makes a person alert when they consume caffeine. Lower levels of cortisol make people more sleepy and more stressed.

So, daylight beats out artificial or poor lighting. What then? Well, when it comes to designing your home, different rooms require different levels of light — a measure quantified in units called luxes. An architect will always try to situate rooms that need more light to places that receive more light on the site and vice versa.

Reflective materials

Besides having a great spatial organisation, some rooms eventually do get on the wrong side of the sun due to site constraints. In these cases, consider having reflective materials to bounce more light into the space, such as large mirrors, reflective tiles, light-coloured materials and glass as the finishing material for your kitchen cabinets. These little things all help to introduce more light to those hard-to-reach spaces.

Warmth

Human bodies are sustained at a temperature of 37°C. In the UK, the recommended average temperature for a home is 21°C. Warmth plays a significant role in how comfortable you are in your home. But without incurring a large heating bill, how do you keep your homes at the perfect temperature? It is through the building itself that you can improve how the right temperature can be sustained.

Passive House

Architects have constantly tried to answer this question with new and innovative technology. The passive house is a new standard of architecture that has emerged as the answer to low-energy consuming buildings that keep your home as warm or cool as necessary.

A passive house creates these environments through several means: super-insulation that keeps heat in (or unwanted heat out), a ventilation system that keeps air fresh and clean and the utilisation of heat produced by internal sources, such as computers and people. In a bombshell, staying warm in your home has never been easier before — employing these new technologies in your home easily creates comfortable environments that won't leave you shivering in the winter night.