While every home design is unique, our designers follow certain principles and instincts built on experience to create a feeling of luxury. Everything plays a role in finding the right balance — from the materials and textures, down to the hues and lighting.

In this Gig Harbor waterfront home, we applied contrast in unexpected ways using scale, making sure one element wasn’t so strong to demand all the attention. By skillfully combining opposing and complimentary surfaces, mixed materials and textures, we create what we can only describe as surface tension. This imbues the rooms with a new and uniquely original appeal that is simply hard to describe any other way.

The client wanted a luxury kitchen that was both practical for family use and perfect for entertaining friends and business associates. Our goal was to produce a sustainable design that would withstand the test of time, both in appearance and materials, rather than answer to fleeting trends.

Sustainable materials included caramelized bamboo for cabinetry — we opted for wide planks to avoid a busy feel and we contrasted the strong, contemporary look of the bamboo with reclaimed chestnut flooring, satin-finish granite counters, and a metal backsplash.

One more goal for this space was a flawless union between the indoors and the outdoors. A glass wall opens up so the kitchen and the dining table can also be used from the outside. A TV, concealed under a wood inset on the right side of the sink, can rotate to give best vantage points from either inside or out.

Natural materials like wood help create a seamless indoor/outdoor transition. That includes a wood light fixture — a raw-edge plank — which holds a strip of lighting and is suspended from the ceiling complementing the fir beams and posts.

To emphasize the natural elements, the refrigerator, dishwasher and hood blend with the wood cabinetry. A balanced contrast is created by opting for a stainless steel range.

Much of home design is about listening and asking the right questions to coax what is often emotional insights. Often, it’s difficult for clients to express themselves, their aspirations and challenges. But through our conversations, those details slowly emerge, and soon we’re able to string together their perfect narrative.

That’s when our team can really get to work — using creative freedom to translate that narrative into their ideal space.