As you gaze out your window, do you imagine the possibilities of seeing your home in a new light with a better view? When you love your location, and are truly seeking a fresh perspective on home improvement, look to your windows and doors for the most significant opportunity.
By moving a window, installing a sliding door, or transforming a solid wall into a transparent opening, you can create a world of difference – framing new views, drawing in daylight, improving air circulation, and connecting visual and physical spaces.
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Each home presents its own opportunities, challenges, and reasons for replacing or expanding existing windows and doors. Do you want to enhance energy efficiency by maximizing or limiting solar exposure for your climate zone? Is your motivation to minimize noise from the street or the neighbors? Perhaps you’re looking to the future and want to add automation for aging-in-place convenience?
Or maybe it is something more simple and deeply personal? Do you picture a corner window with a private view from your bedroom? Could you reposition a window to perfectly capture the morning light while you sip your coffee at the breakfast table? Would you consider adding an opening for cross-ventilation to catch a fresh breeze off the lake?
Whatever your reason, windows and doors can make the difference in every room of your home.
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Family rooms, great rooms and living rooms can benefit from replacing small entrances or a pair of windows with expansive folding doors that open into a backyard or pool area, creating a connected indoor-outdoor living area. Unobstructed access to your outdoor spaces is a boon for entertaining or enjoying nice weather. When the doors are closed, the living room will still have exceptional daylight and open views – contributing to natural, biophilic design.
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Another area where embracing indoor-outdoor living offers great potential is your kitchen. Replacing a fixed window with a pass-through window makes it easy to utilize an outdoor patio area for barbecues and get-togethers. Pass-through windows allow you to effortlessly serve guests sitting on the patio or easily access ingredients for the grill instead of trying to operate a door when your hands are full.
Another unique renovation idea for the kitchen is to replace a traditional tile backsplash with a countertop window. Installed on an exterior wall, it will add natural light over your prep surface. Used on an interior wall, you gain greater visibility and connection between rooms.
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An elegant dining room window can frame a natural view as precious as fine art. To truly appreciate your surroundings, expansive windows create a beautiful and dynamic focal point for you and your guests to enjoy. Showcase the best views in the house with bold framing that matches your style and a large field of unobstructed glass.
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For those with nearby neighbors and more limited vistas, renovating the dining room with symmetrically-aligned smaller windows or distinctive geometric shapes can enhance a sophisticated design as well.
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Quality rest is central to our well-being. Quality windows and doors in our bedrooms allow us to relax and recharge. Along with helping maintain a comfortable temperature, we also need our windows and doors to support acoustic performance for quiet contemplation and sleep. The sound, scent, and sensation of a fresh breeze through an open window can sooth us and calm our minds. When it’s time to wake, each of us knows the rejuvenating power of daylight. Thoughtfully positioning windows for the best light, views and ventilation can turn your basic bedroom into a personal sanctuary.
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Nowhere is the balance of comfort and privacy more important than our bathrooms. Clerestory windows in bathrooms or different configurations of tinted, colored, patterned, and textured glass ensure privacy while adding visual interest and daylight. When connected to a bedroom as an en suite, a bathroom also can utilize interior windows between the two spaces. Gauzy smart glass offers an innovative solution that switches from transparent to private at the push of a button to achieve privacy when needed, and to retain natural light and views when it’s not.
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Your corridors, hallways and stairways are the arteries that connect spaces to the heart of your home, yet we often overlook these critical links as a potential hub of daylight, illumination and views. Brighten up these pathways by adding exterior windows on a hallway wall, at the top stair landing, or at an intersecting corner. Clerestory windows also can be utilized on interior walls to extend light further into the home. Aligning windows on parallel walls defines and extends a line of sight throughout your home and across your property.
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Work-from-home has become a new normal for many of us. Renovating your home office with a purposeful placement of windows can help boost your creativity and productivity. Optimize your natural lighting for daytime hours. Present a striking background for video calls without the need of a filter. Where our offices do double-duty as guestrooms, fitness areas and craft corners, these flex spaces all can benefit from the addition of windows or sliding doors to help keep us focused and in harmony with our surroundings.
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Whichever rooms you decide will benefit from window replacement, door additions or other expanded daylight openings, remember these are the only elements of your home seen and experienced from both outside and indoors.
Your home deserves a professional touch and customized solution to not only make sure your design goals are achieved, but that your windows and doors are properly installed and structurally sound. Working with a professional will provide the most reliable advice on aesthetic options, material selection, performance advantages and realistic timelines.
When you choose windows and doors of high quality, they can last for generations. Exceptional products will ensure that your windows and doors pass the test of time and deliver beautiful elegance to your home.
Contact Kolbe today to learn how our windows and doors can help you realize the renovated and remodeled rooms of your dreams.