Spaniards Close

A basement renovation with walk on floor glazing

Basement renovations are a blossoming trend among residential architecture, with a little investment they can be transformed into impressive game rooms, theatre rooms or even additional bedroom space. Basements tend to be unused spaces that, over time, get filled with old and unwanted furniture and old possessions.

A basement room is usually a very large space as it sits below the whole ground floor floorplan, meaning it holds great potential. These spaces usually make excellent guest bedrooms or additional family spaces. Many basement renovations are seen to repurpose existing spaces; however, basement rooms can be created by digging down below the garden to make new living spaces sunken beneath the lawn.

Basement renovations can be very light poor which can make them quite dark and dreary spaces. This is where modern glazing installations can completely transform the basement. Invisio™ glass floors can be installed to the ground floor which then creates light wells in the ceiling of the basement.

Basement rooms are increasingly popular especially within urban areas where the option to extend living spaces outwards isn’t always possible. Within the lower ground living spaces, natural light is highly desired to provide a more inviting living space. This was the case a Spaniards Close, where the homeowners wanted to make the most of their property by improving the living spaces in the basement rooms.

To Spaniards Close several walk-on glass floor lights were installed to create voids down into the basement to allow natural daylight to penetrate through. The walk-on floor lights were installed within the garden of the property which meant the rooms below could benefit from direct natural sunlight. The floor lights were installed externally, therefore, IQ used their Invisio Structural Glass Floor which is a thermally broken system offering exceptional thermal performance to the building. The thermally broken structural glass eliminates the cold bridging effect often seen with this type of glazing.

All the floor lights were designed in a rectilinear design to create a neat finish to the external face of the building. The floor lights were installed to run parallel with the base of the walls for a sophisticated architectural design.

All of the floor lights were sandblasted to add privacy to the basement rooms while still allowing light to flood through. The sandblasted finish also creates a non-slip surface to the thermally broken floor lights which are required from a health and safety point of view.