Home Profiles
Most Creative Lighting Throughout
Nathan Taylor of Obelisk Home worked with these homeowners to design a home that perfectly blends natural light with creative, thoughtful lighting placed throughout the home.
By Jamie Thomas
Nov 2020
Photo by Jeremy Mason McGraw, Global Image Creations and Colby KernSoft lighting throughout the property is used to accent spaces and angles, creating a warm interior atmosphere and drawing the eye to some of the more detailed decorations, like this light fixture.
WINNING DESIGNER: Nathan Taylor, Obelisk Home
PROJECT GOAL: Inspired by the work of an architect that they had seen in Florida, the homeowners wanted to create a property that made significant use of creative and natural lighting, along with modern lighting technology, to create an open, spacious home that still serves as somewhere to relax and feel comfortable.
“The homeowners saw a plan that an architect had done in Florida,” says Nathan Taylor of Obelisk Home. “[They] reached out to this architect and that’s where this process began.” The homeowners sent the finished floor plan to a local architect in southwest Missouri, who proceeded to make a number of changes to the layout. “One of the things that was really important, especially to the husband, was great lighting and incorporating LED technology,” Taylor says.
Even a glance at the photos of the property immediately shows the extent of the intricate and creative design that went into lighting the home. This is given further depth, says Taylor, by providing the homeowners with adjustable controls to change the different levels of ambient lighting both inside and outside of the property. “The lighting system can all be controlled individually or with a touch of one button and the entire house can be lit up,” Taylor says.
Photos by Jeremy Mason McGraw, Global Image Creations and Colby KernWith just as much care and work put into the exterior lighting, the property is bathed in an inviting glow that the owners can easily control thanks to state-of-the art technology.
Photos by Jeremy Mason McGraw, Global Image Creations and Colby KernOpen-plan spaces and state-of-the art lighting tech were put to spectacular use in this design.
Photos by Jeremy Mason McGraw, Global Image Creations and Colby KernOpen spaces and open planning provide the perfect canvas for Nathan Taylor’s light-focus and space-conscious aesthetic.
Along with the lighting, the open-plan design is exemplified in the layout of the kitchen and dining area. “They wanted very much for the dining room and kitchen to be all open, [and] also open to the outside of the home,” Taylor says. “There’s a huge patio that opens off the kitchen where the sliding glass doors telescope back into a wall.”
Perhaps the most eye-catching feature is the light fixture above the dining table, which is blown glass pieces combined into one, and was crafted to offset the cleaner design of the property with wild, freeform patterns to add a unique texture to the decor. “That was a fixture that I designed with a lighting manufacturer,” Taylor says. “We wanted it to be as multi-length as possible and to give a lot of architectural interest without feeling heavy [...] It’s all blown glass and there's an LED fixture inside. We wanted it to feel very sculptural.”
It’s not just the interior of the house that’s adorned with atmospheric lighting. The same aesthetic of using light to accentuate the space and the layout of the home can be seen outside, whether in the stainless steel pipe-organ style sculpture (designed by Obelisk Home co-owner J. Kent Martin), the lighting of the water features or the lights that glow up the exterior walls. “They wanted something tall and that had lots of texture and dimension,” Taylor says of the pipe structure. “You can actually walk into the center of it. We put lights in the ground and at night it lights up and glows magically.”
