Here in Cyprus, people love buying by the sea. One of the first questions people ask is ‘how far is it to the sea?’ Therefore, to accommodate this demand for seaside houses, developers started building a shed load of them. The sad thing about it is that most are of similar designs – a box – and ALL are concrete, painted white; ALL have those white tiles with little stones in them and as a consequence, ALL possess the creativity of a dead moose. Not the ones with the big antlers either!

Address the fact that a house – 99.9% of the time – is going to be white concrete. Where is the life in concrete? there is either little or none. So add to it with some wood. Break the monotony with anything you can. Wood is just an alternative that has many positive features:

• Wood is a natural resource, encouraging life within your home.
• Panels of wood come in thin, long strips where you can easily manipulate the contours to ‘lead’ someone’s attention to or from certain areas.
• Wood is warm, physically and psychologically. A great insulator of heat, and not cold to the touch.
• Wood is easy: to lay a wooden deck down or to put up a wooden fence requires minimal foundation work.
• At the end of the day, wood can easily be much cheaper than other alternatives.

The simple reason is that the colour white reflects most of the light, keeping your home nice and cool and it looks clean. Being the cheapest paint may have something to do with it – perhaps. Realistically, though, the colour of the paint doesn’t really affect the temperature that much at all. There is little or no regard for heat retention/depletion in the building world here in Cyprus, and what most foreigners don’t know is that the winters here are actually quite chilly. Heating and cooling your home can become very costly; air cons are on all the time in the summer, and electric fires are on for the whole night in the winter. Other than buying a place, tearing it down and re-building to a higher standard, here are some options:

• Get double glazing.
• Get a contractor to weld sheets of insulation to your roof.
• Check and stop drafts from doors and windows.
• Improve water heater solar panels.

White paint clean? No chance! White is the quickest colour to show dirt and age. All those pictures of beautiful white villas clutching the Greek hillsides by the sea, with blue shutters and roaming cats, are in fact really rare. Yes they look nice, but pretty impractical! If you have the money and time to do it, go for it, but bear in mind that the effect will be wasted because you still need to own a place on the hillside by the sea, and you need to convince everyone on your street to do the same.

Another quality that is associated with beach villas is open-plan (free movement of space). Like in the movies, when they walk off the back patio onto the beach; the living room has a fully stocked bar; and the nearby swimming pool is edged with palm trees. Things aren’t as simple in Cyprus though; walls go from floor to ceiling, windows are holes in walls, and doors are in the corner of the room. The reason for this is that the style of construction is done as simply as possible. The way a villa – or any other type of building – is created in Cyprus has 4 steps.

1. Foundation. Concrete sections are laid down to support the weight.
2. Frame. This reinforced concrete skeleton is made by pouring concrete into a mould.
3. Walls. Red brick is laid in between the vertical supports to create the rooms with gaps for windows and doors.
4. Rendering. Cement finishes off the building, with door and window frames in place.

If your budget allows, can you change the layout of your house? Can you get rid of those unnecessary walls, or stylishly make them into low counters/put a large archway in ... just open up the space! Whilst you may change the layout of your house internally, external changes require planning permission. However, they are the best way to help sell it - eg., most places have a minimal number of windows, which are usually small, and only one set of sliding doors for each balcony or patio. Can you change it? If you decide to enlarge a window a large section needs to knocked out and a larger lintel bought (so it all costs a lot), or you can enlarge downwards to the floor (cheaper, and a nice effect). A long vertical strip of positive space promotes a higher ceiling, an unrestricted view outside, a definite break in the wall, and something different.

What most constructors/developers forget about is lighting. This is no exception to the rule as this house is definitely not in Cyprus. (Because it’s Tiger Woods’)

What the architect has done is not to limit himself to a single type of light format, or light layout. Different types of lights create different effects, as well as different shades of light. No pun intended! Normally you will find a single light in each room hanging from the ceiling, or strip lights in places like the kitchen. The reason they are like this is because strip lights are economical, and it is easy to build a room with only one light, nothing else. If your budget allows, then don’t limit yourself to only buying another light bulb holder - do you even want just the one light? Why not put two or three? Why are they in the ceiling anyway? Put floor lighting around your room or by a special feature. Why not put lights on a wall or two? Make it recessed, or in your face.

Luckily, because lighting is a forgotten field here, if you create something slightly different then it will seem really different. Don’t stop at the interior though, do the outside as well. Here you have even more options to play with: put lights in your garden, around the edge of the pool, light up that little walkway you put in a few weeks ago, put one shining on that huge weathered rock you pinched from the beach years ago! Anything that will promote the mood that you are looking for.

It’s not the brightness of the area you are changing, but the emphasis on the areas. A low light slowly melting into a feature makes you feel different to a strong harsh light that scans the area for escaping prisoners. Obvious, but oh so easy to forget. When you go to the light shop in a few weeks’ time, walk around with the idea of ‘what helps me do what I want to do?’ rather than ‘ooh, that looks nice!’ Go for simple light fittings that don’t steal the spotlight, so to speak, because they are supposed to help you put the spotlight on a much larger picture: your house.

To wrap it up, you can create a beach side villa-effect with only a few resources that are used well. Use wood, try an open plan layout, and refine your lighting arrangement. But use them well! Go for the simple design that encourages freedom of movement and a gentle lifestyle.

This is just one example of a solid style; you don’t have to follow it as strongly as I have presented it; it’s simply here to help you to think and to give you ideas. If you would like help with presenting your property, don’t hesitate to ask for help. Email Andrea

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