Now Blooming

October 2006

Room With A View

By Rachel Ezekiel-Fishbein

Bathrooms and kitchens are the rooms most often renovated and among the best choices for increasing resale value. According to Brad Baker, president of Baker Creative of Wyncote, homeowners may overlook one important aspect of their design project, the view.

"The view you see looking out the window can significantly impact how you feel when you are in that space and how you end up using it," explains Baker.

"Consider the difference between looking out your kitchen window at a neighbor's brick wall and gazing out at a flowering bush with a bird feeder. The former detracts from the ambience of the room, while the latter encourages you to spend time there and even provides entertainment."

Perhaps kitchen and bath renovations are so popular due to the frequency with which we use these rooms. Kitchens have become the most lived in room in America, morphing into the family gathering place where most of the dramas of modem life get played out. Bathrooms, on the other hand, are a place of necessity, where we also spend a lot of time, and have even evolved into spaces of luxury with therapeutic tubs or showers that double as steam rooms.

The amount of time spent in them and the popularity of their redesign is where the similarity between these two rooms ends. When planning for a bathroom, an important consideration is privacy. You can use nature to help make a bath more appealing, but you'll want to focus on movement and shadow. Many of Baker's clients cover the lower half of a window for privacy, while outside he creates a vista of trees and flowering stems of ornamental grasses visible through the top half of the window. Doing so gives the illusion of a larger space.

The smaller scale of a bathroom makes it an excellent venue for bringing in the fragrance of the outdoors. A single stem of freesia or a small cutting from a lilac bush will provide the appropriate visual proportion for the space and fill the bathroom with its fragrance for several days. This small bit of sensory ambience often is more appreciated in a bathroom than in a larger living area.

When designing either room, why not choose a focal point, such as a windowsill, on which to place a special vase or urn that complements your interior design? Year-round you can fill it with bounty from outdoors, such as roses, forsythia or the rich color of a Japanese maple cutting. When planting new bushes or flowers, consider the style and colors of your interior to build a bridge between outdoors and in, giving your home design greater harmony.

As for kitchens, Baker encourages homeowners to consider the room's locale before even beginning the design process.  "The slightest change in orientation can have a surprising impact on the amount of sun the room receives, and thus the pleasure the room returns to you," explains Baker. "I had one client who was about to break ground on a project when she showed us the plans and we encouraged her to shift the orientation several degrees.

"With the initial plan, her home would have received no natural light in the winter; now she enjoys bright sun year-round. In a kitchen, the thoughtful placement of window can allow you to see the sun set while eating dinner or bask in early light over your morning coffee."

Baker also asks his clients to consider what they would like to see through their windows. Many want to screen a nuisance view, such as trash cans, or to protect their privacy. With foresight and planning, the materials you use to do this can add interest to your redesign. Many families plant trees or bushes to block out unpleasant views. Adding a colorful plant in front of that screen can give you something more engaging to look at while still achieving your goal. Baker has planted both forsythia and Japanese Maples with evergreens as their backdrop.

"The closer you plant your screen to your house, the more noticeable it will be. Even a wispy plant that you love can block out a neighbor's house if you plant it close enough to your window.  Window boxes and hanging gardens are perfect for this use. So are bird feeders and wind chimes," says Baker.

Herb gardens and small vegetable gardens planted close to a kitchen are pragmatic for the avid cook and can also add visual interest, particularly if you break away from the traditional notion that they must fill dull, square spaces. The latest trend in vegetable and herb gardens is container planting. There is a range of containers available in every material from copper to concrete, and at every price point. Space for an indoor herb garden can even be included in your kitchen design, as can a display area for dried herbs, berries, garlic and indoor plants, whether on the wall, in baskets or hanging from the ceiling.

One final factor to consider is outdoor lighting. Lighting your view out of doors - providing an exterior that is visible after the sunsets without being overwhelmingly bright - is as fundamental to enjoying using your kitchen as making sure the room is bathed in adequate natural light.

Pennsylvania Certified Horticulturist Brad Baker is president of Baker Creative in Wyncote. To see Baker Creative's work, visit www.bakercreative.com. For more information, call 215-884-4978.

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