Optimal Home Orientation
Optimal Home Orientation
Despite its impact on energy efficiency, comfort, lighting and view, the aspect and positioning of a home is something that often goes unconsidered by many home buyers and builders. At Arden Homes, it’s our mission to educate and assist our customers, to ensure the creation of your dream home. In pursuit of this, we’re providing you with everything you need to know about home orientation and its effect on your home. Keep reading to learn more.
What is home orientation?
Home orientation is an element of passive design. It involves positioning particular rooms and windows based on light exposure, heat and wind variations, with the intent to maximise natural light and reduce the need for mechanical heating and cooling systems. Australia’s climate places a lot of demand on the design of a home. Particularly in Melbourne, where temperatures can soar during the summer months, and dip dramatically during the winter, orientation can have a fundamental impact on a home’s temperature. Different climates require different design strategies to create the most comfortable living conditions. It’s also crucial to design your home for the entire year, not just a single season.
At Arden, we conduct detailed, personalised and comprehensive consultations with our customers, to get a thorough understanding of your family’s individual needs. This helps us to determine what block, home and room positioning will achieve the most enhanced and comfortable living experience. To ultimately optimise your home’s orientation, we can flip rooms, move walls and even call up a new set of revised layout drawings.
How does home orientation impact your home?
Energy efficiency. According to the Australian Government, approximately 40% of household energy is used to achieve thermal comfort, through the use of mechanical heating and cooling. However, a well-positioned and designed home can maximise sunlight during winter to create heat, and block out peak sun exposure during summer to maintain a comfortable temperature. This means that heating and cooling systems are less relied on, resulting in reduced energy bills.
Comfort. It doesn’t matter if your home is located in the best estate if your home is too dark, too cold or too hot. It goes without saying that a home that is flooded with intense sunlight during summer, and deprived of sun exposure in winter, will prove uncomfortable for its residents. Optimally oriented homes help to enhance comfort for families, by harnessing sunlight when it is needed to warm a home and blocking it out when it isn’t.
Maximised natural light. Families want their most active spaces, such as the living, dining, kitchen and garden, to be bathed in sunlight, since they are the areas occupied most frequently. A home that is positioned intelligently will enable the entrance of natural light into these rooms. At Arden, we include sun courts and large picture windows in all of our home designs to flood interiors with natural light and provide great cross-flow ventilation for year-round comfort.
View. It’s important to have a home that captures appealing views of your neighbourhood and surrounding areas. After helping you to find a block of land within a prime location, we’ll also make sure to maximise the views surrounding your home. Large, picture windows are a standard inclusion for all of Arden’s home designs, and the views afforded by these beautiful feature windows are meant to be enjoyed.
What home orientation is most desirable?
Optimal home orientation is dependent on the needs of the home’s occupants. When looking in a southerly market like Melbourne, most home builders desire positions that maximise northern sunlight. This aspect places the garden and main living spaces towards the north of the home, so that sunlight can be enjoyed throughout the day’s entirety.
No matter the orientation of your block, the team at Arden are experts in home design and construction. We are passionate about design flexibility and will tailor a layout that makes the most out of your building block.