family room

Creating the Ideal Spaces for Your Love Story

Creating the Ideal Spaces for Your Love Story

They say that love makes a house a home. In celebration of Romance Awareness Month, Atlanta Custom Home Builder and Luxury Renovation Company – Highlight Homes wishes to reveal a number of ways that you can add an air of romance to your renovation or custom home construction. By incorporating one or more of these suggestions to your blueprints, you will be creating the ideal spaces in which your own special love story will unfold…

  • Master Bedroom: Well, this one is fairly obvious. The bedroom is the place where you will spend more than 2,500 hours a year – and only some of that will be spent sleeping. To create a sense of comfort blended with a slightly sultry suggestiveness, textures, colors and décor will play a major role. Design to fit your blended tastes and shared memories. For instance, if you share a particularly special memory of a vacation to the beach, you may want to incorporate nautically themed elements. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to place a cheesy conch shell lamp on each bedside table. You can achieve the FEELING of a seaside sophistication through use of color, artwork and linens. If you’re looking for a more mainstream theme, colors like red, pink and white are often associated with romance and can appear as pops of color as an accent wall, in throw pillows, in an area rug, in your bed top linens – just to name a few. Satin, velvet and Egyptian cotton linens are also often associated with romance. The theory of Feng Shui suggests decorating in pairs to suggest harmony. Add a little mood lighting with a gorgeous chandelier hung directly over the bed or a handsome pair of pendant lights hung over your nightstands. You may want to incorporate a dimmer switch to soften the light. Lastly, floor-length curtains on each of the windows enhance the sense of romance.
  • Master Bathroom: The overall feel should be one of luxury. From a large claw-footed soaking tub to a super-sized walk-in shower, the suggestion here is that you make room for two. Flowers and candles will add a little romance to the air. This is another space where a dimmable switch may prove useful. Dual vanities are important for keeping the peace, as are his and her walk-in closets – so you may want to consider incorporating these in your custom master bathroom or bathroom remodel.
  • Kitchen: If you and your loved one LOVE to cook, your kitchen should be designed to support the two of you working side-by-side. Incorporating a large kitchen island that equally suited for food prep as it is for seating means that – for those couples who DON’T share a love of cooking – one can sit and chat while the other works their magic on the stove.
  • Family Room: The focal point of your family room should be the fireplace. Create a cozy setting around the mantle – no matter the weather outside – where you can enjoy cuddling with the one you love. Surround yourself with some of your favorite photos from different chapters of your love story together. Again, candles and floor length window treatments will serve to enhance the air of romance in this space.
  • Outdoor Living Spaces: What’s more romantic than a night spent in front of a crackling fire out under the stars. A firepit or built-in outdoor hearth can be your focal point, surrounding by cozy outdoor seating that’s ideal for cuddling. String lights above to add to the enchantment of this space. Imagine enjoying cocktails and sharing stories with the love of your life here for years to come.

The best news of all is that Highlight Homes can help you begin incorporating all of this and more in either a renovation of your existing home or the construction of a custom home. To learn more about Highlight Homes and our signature design-build method, please visit www.highlighthomesga.com. Once you’re ready to get started, contact us at 678-874-9234 or info@highlighthomesga.com. We’d love to have a hand in creating a beautiful backdrop for your happily ever after!

What Makes a Great Room Great?

What Makes a Great Room Great?

There is no better time than the holiday season to really explore all of the elements that make a Great Room truly GREAT. Also known in many circles as the “Family Room”, it’s a room of the home where countless everyday moments happen AND where major milestones are marked. As the backdrop to all of these special occasions, special care should be given to the design and realization of this living space that sees an awful lot of living. Whether creating this space as part of a major renovation of your current home or placing an emphasis on this space in the design of your new custom home, Highlight Homes has some opinions on the matter of taking a Great Room to the Greatest Room you’ll ever know (and love!)…

The Hearth of the Home:  From the materials used to create the surround to the mantle itself, the fireplace in your Great Room should be a focal point – a veritable work of art. It should reflect your personality and sense of style, as well as complement the rest of your home. From stacked stone with a rough-hewn timber mantle to a marble surround with intricate woodwork, you can go as casual or as formal as you wish to set the tone for the rest of the room.

Raise the Roof: One component many builders use to make a Great Room feel GRAND is an open second story – opening the space up immeasurably. At Christmastime, just imagine how TALL your Christmas tree could be! If a two-story Great Room isn’t in the cards, there may still be a way to raise the ceilings to 10 feet for more of a sense of spaciousness.

The World Outside: Windows are an important element of your Great Room. If you have a particularly beautiful and PRIVATE backyard, a wall of windows may serve to make the room seem more expansive – connecting it to the world outside. If that is not the case, the addition of just a few windows to let the light shine in might be a better way to go – helping to keep the focus inside the room itself.

All the Trimmings: Woodwork can serve as the frame to the Great Room of your dreams. For a more rustic, cozy feel, you might elect to go with timber rafters. For a more traditional, formal feel, you might incorporate a coffered ceiling, crown molding and built-in bookcases.

Go with the Flow: If you always dreamed of having one of those enormous overstuffed sectionals where you and the entire family can lounge around eating popcorn and watching a Christmas movie marathon, it’s important to communicate this to your builder. The layout of the room should be designed in such a way to accommodate your vision – from the placement of the sectional to the location of the TV.

The Ground Beneath Your Feet: Choice of flooring can serve to enhance this space, as well. If you elect to go with hardwoods or tile, you’ll want to invest in throw rugs to soften the space and make it more inviting. The addition of carpet will make it more welcoming to bare feet, but be aware that spills in this popular space are a very real possibility – making the investment in stain-resistant carpet a wise one.

A Little Light on the Subject: Lighting is an oft overlooked design element that – when wielded properly – can result in a stunning transformation of any space. If your Great Room doesn’t get a lot of natural light, you’ll want to pay attention to the placement of your lighting. For a truly dramatic effect, invest in one showstopper fixture in the center of the room.

Color Me Happy: The choice of paint colors in this space can serve to open up the space further AND set the mood. You might want to keep it neutral and let your décor do the talking, or you may want to choose a paint and trim color that will enhance the ambiance. Gray is all the rage in home design. You might elect to paint the walls a pale gray and the trim a slightly darker gray. Gray exudes a sense of balance, formality and sophistication. Other emotions/sensations tied to color include: beige = calm, white = clean, black = edgy, brown = earthy and rustic, pink = innocent, red = passionate, yellow = happy, green = natural, blue = serene and inviting.

The team at Atlanta-based Highlight Homes welcomes the opportunity to help you transform the look of your current family room, add a Great Room onto your existing home or design a custom home on your behalf that includes the Great Room of your dreams. Getting started is easy! Simply call us at 678-873-9234 or email us at info@highlighthomesga.com to schedule your no obligation consultation. You can also elect to complete our convenient online contact form.

From all of us here at Highlight Homes, we wish you and yours a very Happy Holiday Season and all the very best in the New Year!

Hearth and Home: Highlight Spotlight on Today’s Fireplace

Hearth and Home: Highlight Spotlight on Today’s Fireplace

Keeping Room Fireplace 1 - HLH 2016

Since the beginning of man, fire has been central to the home. A necessity from the start, it can stave off the cold, serve as a light in the darkness and aid in the preparation of countless meals. Used mainly now to create a sense of ambiance, the fireplace – or hearth – remains at the heart of most major living spaces today. The mantle often sets the tone for the décor in the room – many now dominated by flat screen TVs in place of artwork. From ornately carved woodwork and marble to repurposed rough-hewn timber and stacked stone, the hearth is also central to the feeling of the space that surrounds it. One home may feature a traditional fireplace adorned with beloved family photos, while another may boast a floor-to-ceiling stone hearth with a minimalistic slant towards interior design. And with many homes extending their living spaces outside, the outdoor hearth continues to gain steam as a popular addition to exterior “rooms” of the home.

 

Keeping Room Fireplace 2 - HLH 2016

When constructing a semi-custom or custom home, bear in mind that your fireplace should fit the overall aesthetic of your home. For example, a more traditional Craftsman-style home might prove a great fit for a rustic stone fireplace with timber mantle whereas a Contemporary-style home might call for a more modern firebox with clean lines and smooth, sleek finishes. Functionality is also a major consideration. Traditionalists may prefer a wood-burning fireplace, but gas logs continue to dominate the market for their convenience and affordability. As many homes become more technologically connected, some gas logs can be controlled via wireless remotes – plus there’s no need to sweep up ashes at the end of the day. Outdoor hearths should also be a major consideration – whether a firepit at the center of a brick patio under the stars on a crisp, cool Spring night or a true showplace hearth set inside a covered deck for countless Autumn evenings spent watching the embers glow.

 

Outdoor Hearth - Highlight Homes 2015No matter what your vision of the ideal hearth to fit your home might be – a breathtaking addition to a two-story great room or a romantic enhancement to a master bedroom (or BOTH), Highlight Homes welcomes the opportunity to help you make that vision a vibrant reality. To schedule a consultation with a member of our custom construction team, call 678-873-9234, e-mail info@highlighthomesga.com or fill out our convenient online contact form. To learn more about Highlight Homes and view some of our work, please visit us at www.highlighthomesga.com.