Houzz Tour: Lowcountry Style With an Eye on Entertaining
“Wherever I go, I’m always taking lots of photographs of homes in the area, getting the style down,” says architect Wayne Visbeen. To prepare for designing a home with local Lowcountry style in Bluffton, South Carolina, he and his colleagues at Michigan-based Visbeen Architects thoroughly researched the regional architecture. Their research taught them about the ways Southerners have been beating the heat (and the bugs) for years. The house takes full advantage of breezes and shade, with plenty of outdoor entertainment space connected to the home. Combining regional architectural elements with modern functionality that makes the most of every square inch, they got the Lowcountry look just right.
Houzz at a Glance
Location: Bluffton, South Carolina
Size: 2,877 square feet (267 square meters), 3 bedrooms, 3½ bathrooms. The home also has a carriage house with space upstairs that can serve as a separate apartment, work space or guesthouse.
Part of capturing Lowcountry style included using locally harvested and milled board and batten siding and a standing-seam metal roof. The style of the chimney cap is also commonly seen in the region.
It was also important that the 1½-story house fit in with the other homes in the neighborhood through its massing, scale and style.
Classic proportions compose a pleasing front facade. A dining area on the left balances out the screened-in porch on the right, creating symmetry, with a porch in the center. The gable runs from the front of the house to the back, and additional gables give the upstairs floor plan some flexibility. Currently it has two bedrooms, but the existing space can be divided or expanded to include built-in bunks.
Many of the historic homes in the area were built before air conditioning was the norm, and were designed to stay cool. Elements like porches and window and doors placed to take advantage of cross breezes were all important parts of this home’s design. The team nestled the house among existing mature trees that provide shade.
Visbeen’s goal was to keep the house smaller than 3,000 square feet, so making the most of the footprint was paramount. This meant creating flexible spaces that felt intimate yet could open up and have a nice flow for entertaining guests. This is the more public living room, right off the front entry. A door to the right leads to the front screened-in porch; the four-paned door on the left leads to a side porch we’ll look at in a moment.
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Houzz Tour: Lowcountry Style With an Eye on Entertaining
