Porcelain Barn Lights Offer Dark-Sky Friendly Alternative
Austin, Texas is a wild and wacky town full of great food and amazing music. It’s also a wonderful place to sightsee if you love neighborhoods with interesting architecture. Our friends at Hatch Works recently designed and built a new home in Austin and today we chat with owner Adam Talianchich on how he created a modern farmhouse complete with dark sky-friendly barn lighting for his client.
Q: Where is this home located?
A: The home is in Central East Austin and has a view of the Capitol from the master bedroom and the second story porch. Before we started design work, we set up scaffolding on the property and moved it around to find the best viewing corridor for downtown. Downtown is west of the property so it makes for some pretty awesome sunset/skyline views.
Q: What feel were you going for as you worked on this home?
A: The original direction was in the vein of a Prairie House (a la Chicago early 1900s, early Frank Lloyd Wright) with some modern updates. However, that particular style doesn’t really blend in with the neighborhood which has a number of ’20s and ’30s craftsman bungalows, board-and-batten shotgun houses, and a few older, turn-of-the-century homes. We opted to go for the older farmhouse look with a number of modern twists that predated the craftsman movement.
Q: What were your requirements for outdoor lighting? Any special considerations due to the lot, environment, or use?
A: The city of Austin has a Dark Sky ordinance so every exterior light has to have a shade that fully covers the bulb so that was certainly a restraint.
Q: Why did you choose porcelain enamel lighting for the exterior?
A: We love porcelain for the durability and the two-toned color on the inside/outside of the shade. An absolute classic!
Q: And why the Esso Gooseneck Lights for the front porch in particular? (Adam chose a 10″ shade, Black finish and G11 gooseneck arm for these fixtures.)
A: Goosenecks are such fun! So much of construction is very rigid and rectilinear, it’s just nice to have some elegant curves to soften some of the hard straight lines. The light fixtures really complement and frame the red door and porch brackets so well.
Q: Why did you choose a Black finish for these gooseneck lights?
A: We have a bright red door (Tanager 6601 by Sherwin Williams) and bright red porch brackets. We feel the black helps ground those strong red accents.
Q: Why did you choose the Esso Wall Sconce for the back patio area as opposed to the gooseneck light? (Adam chose an 8″ shade and Black finish for the wall sconces.)
A: We didn’t want to crowd the space. The wall sconces hug the walls a little tighter and since lights aren’t super high on the wall, we didn’t want them to dominate your line of sight.
Thanks so much for the tour Adam — you nailed the sunset view! We look forward to seeing more of your work in Austin!
Photos courtesy of Stacie Leigh Photography
