Why we visit a site at four in the afternoon

Drawings show where the windows are. Only the site shows where the light goes. On our first visit to any property we try to arrive in the late afternoon and stay until it is dark.

This is when a house tells you what it is. A room that felt dull at ten in the morning can turn gold at four. A bright kitchen can fall flat. We write down which rooms people will actually use at that hour, because that is when most of us come home.

What we take away

We take photographs from where a person would sit, not from the doorway. We note where the sun lands on the floor and where it stops. A bar of light across a floorboard is worth more to us than any colour sample.

It also changes what we ask clients. Instead of asking what they want in the living room, we ask where they sit at the end of the day. The answers are specific and they are usually surprising.

We then design the lighting last, but we plan for it first. A house that is generous with daylight needs very little added to it. A house that is not needs us to think carefully about every lamp.