Interior designer in West Vancouver

West Vancouver houses live on slopes. Entries arrive mid-level, garages sit above living space, and the best rooms belong on the view side. We plan vertically as much as horizontally, and we know which municipal approvals hillside changes trigger.

Glare and heat are real design constraints on south-facing view walls. Window treatments, finishes and lighting get chosen for how they behave at 4 p.m. in July, not just how they photograph.

The renovation stock includes mid-century houses worth taking seriously. When a 1960s post-and-beam crosses our desk, restraint is the strategy. We keep the structure legible and put the new work into kitchens, bathrooms and lighting.

Stairs do more work here than in a flat-lot house. With living space spread over several levels, the stair is used all day and seen from the main rooms, so we design it as a piece of the interior and think early about how people will manage the levels as they age.

Steep sites affect the build as well as the plan. Access, parking for trades and deliveries of large items such as stone slabs and furniture all need planning on a hillside lot, and we account for them in the sequence before work begins.

Closer to the water, Ambleside and Dundarave have apartments and condos that suit people leaving a larger house on the hill. Those projects are about fitting a lifetime of furniture and art into fewer rooms, and deciding honestly what comes along.

Decks and terraces are part of the living space on a view lot. We plan the inside and the outside together, so the flooring lines up at the threshold, the furniture outside does not block the view from inside, and the doors open the way the room is used.

When the house is new, we join alongside the builder while walls can still move. On a sloped site that is when the important decisions are made: which level the kitchen sits on, where the stair lands and which rooms get the view.

Distance from our Surrey studio is a matter of planning. We combine site visits with trade meetings, review samples and drawings by video or at the studio, and send a weekly summary while construction is under way.