Think of a cool tile floor, long deep windows, French doors, comfortable furnishings in bright, cheerful colors -- coral and peach, aqua and rose -- and most of all, of light pouring in, filling the space to the ceiling.
In short, think of a sun room, that gracious, lively, livable sun-catcher, so much a part of Baltimore architecture from Waverly to Homeland, from Hampden to Guilford, from Ednor Gardens to Roland Park.
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On the west side of a graceful, center-hall Colonial in Homeland, light filters through white wooden miniblinds. It falls on )( peach-colored walls and persimmon-colored pillows, on a 19th-century French country hutch displaying American, French and English Majolica plates, on a small desk, on a doll's dining suite atop an Oriental painted cabinet.
The narrow room used to be a terrace, and under a blue and orange antique Hamadan carpet, it still has its flagstone floor. A former window and a door are now matching pocket French doors, leading into the brilliant persimmon and navy living room. At the back of the terrace, double French doors open to the meandering terrace.
"It started out to be a family room," says owner Jean McHale, antiques dealer, furniture designer, collector of fine English and European antiques, and mother of three boys. "But now it's become a reading room."
She describes the house as typical of its neighborhood and style; the columned corners and many-paned windows of the sun room might always have been part of the structure. The value of the sun room over the terrace, however, is its usefulness in any season.
"It's the most cheerful room in the house," Ms. McHale says. "You know what I love to do out here? I love to turn on my Mozart and sit at my desk. I design a lot of furniture, and I really like to sit at my clean desk and work. . . . It's the closest thing to heaven."
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They are called by many names -- sun rooms, sun porches, solaria, sun parlours, but the appeal is always the same: It's the whole indoor-outdoor living concept, says architect Mark Beck, of Beck, Powell & Parsons Inc. of Baltimore. People want a place where they can sit and watch birds flying overhead, or look up and see leaves all around, Mr. Beck says. The magic of sun rooms is that they introduce light into a space.
"If you bring light from above, it hits the walls and the walls bounce the light all around. . . . The idea is to feel like you're actually sitting outdoors," he adds.
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Outside the arched windows, beyond a row of evergreens, is where the wildlife are.
"Right there -- that's where the deer walk across," says Cheryl Jones, standing in the new sun room-conservatory at the back of her house in the countryside northwest of Baltimore. "I had never seen all the birds and squirrels -- we even have a family of little rabbits."
The space where the sun room is used to be a deck. "But basically, it was a space we really didn't have much use for," says her husband, Jim Jones. The Joneses, who have three sons, knew they wanted some kind of sun space, and had looked at "restaurant-style" additions.
"But they didn't appeal to us," Mrs. Jones says. Then the couple discovered a construction firm called the Sun Room Co., and their sun room -- a rectangle broken by the graceful circle of the glass-roofed conservatory -- began to take shape.
Now, they have a room filled with light. The white tile floor, the bright wicker furniture with its pale and pastel upholstery, the glass-topped table and the ring of plants all gather in the sunshine.
Although it's new and has all the advantages of modern, dTC technologically sophisticated construction (skylights that close automatically if touched by drops of rain, for instance), the room is in keeping with the comfortable, traditional style of the house.
"We're always in this room. I spend almost all my day here," says Mrs. Jones, who collects dolls. "This is my doll house," she says with a laugh.
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"People like to get close to nature," says Mark Barocco, president of the Sun Room Co. Mid-Atlantic, which designed and built the Joneses' sun room. "So many people have beautiful back yards, and they don't get to use them all year."
The Sun Room Co. uses Amish and Mennonite craftsmen to do the millwork on its sun rooms, conservatories and custom windows.
Sun spaces aren't inexpensive, Mr. Barocco points out: They can cost from $75 to $85 a square foot (about as much as conventional home construction) to as much as $200 per square foot to build, and they require more heat in winter and more air conditioning in summer. And there are other drawbacks: The glass has to be washed, it can break, and in some cases, opening up the house diminishes privacy. But those can be small concerns given the benefits, he says.
"What seems to be happening is the world is getting crowded," he says. "The space we inhabit seems to be getting smaller. This type of space gives you the opportunity to spread your elbows."
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Flowers line the row of French doors and climb the walls as well in the new sun room just added to Helen Ward's traditional house in Baltimore County. The pink geraniums by the doors are real, but the tulips, poppies, pansies, climbing roses and wisteria were painted up the walls and over the tops of the doorways by artisans from Valley Craftsmen.
"I worked with them," says Ms. Ward, an associate decorator with Swann-Hall and avid gardener. "I didn't want them to do whimsical stuff. I wanted multiple colors, so I wouldn't be confined to a color scheme. All the things are really representational."
The space used to be a terrace, and retains its brick floor. Four sets of double French doors open it to the broad expanse of lawn. French doors also join the space to the dining room and living room; on special occasions, the owner says, the new sun space can become part of the dining area.
The room is sparsely furnished as yet. A Victorian wire plant stand holds books, and an odd piece of Victoriana, a sort of elaborately molded stand with small chain festoons, is topped with glass for casual dining. "I love stuff that's sort of funky," Ms. Ward says, laughing.
When it comes to decorating sun rooms, "there are no rules," Ms. Ward says. "You have to find out how the client is going to use it, and how it's located in the house." A sun room off a kitchen, for instance, would probably get a more informal treatment than one located next to a formal living room or dining room. Flooring is generally some hard surface. "I can see French limestone in a very elegant sun room," Ms. Ward says, but she can also envision "some wonderful light wood, with a great rug on top -- maybe a painted floorcloth."
Choosing sun-room fabrics can be a problem, because anything that gets that much sun is likely to fade. New fabrics that are solution-dyed -- that is, the dye suffuses the fibers, rather than being painted on the surface of the cloth -- are great for sun-room furniture. It's easy to "punch up" the decor with pillows and lampshades and other smaller items that are less expensive to replace, Ms. Ward says.
But there's one thing virtually all sun rooms have in common, she says: "In general, it gives you more of a tropical feeling."
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Several stories above the street, in a huge, sunny rectangle of a room, two small dogs and a black and white kitten gambol across the aqua carpet, up onto the comfy aqua and rose chintz upholstered sofa and chairs, around the legs of a table holding books.
"I call it Melinda's beach house," says owner Melinda Davis, joking that her husband, Arthur Davis III, who oftens works on weekends, doesn't see when they'd visit a real home at the beach.
The Baltimore City condominium occupies a former ballroom. The wide, towering rooms originally were flanked by terraces on each side. Some time ago, one side was enclosed to expand the master bedroom suite and provide the sun room. When the Davises moved in, however, the sun room was an undistinguished space with dark colors and New Orleans-style ironwork. Then Ms. Davis, the owner of Mollett Travel Inc. who calls herself "a frustrated decorator," went to work on it. Now the cheerful colors set off collections of books and dog figures. Deep-silled, uncovered windows look east and south. "This is the second-highest point in the city," Ms. Davis says. "In pretty much any kind of weather, we have a spectacular view."
Despite its generous proportions, the room has a cozy glow. The rest of the home, with its grand proportions, has a more elegant, English look, but the sun room is a different shore.
"It's such a different feel," says Ms. Davis. "It's cheery.
"This is where we live. It's gotten a lot of use. When people call, this is where we are."