Earlier this week I read my dear friend Valorie's post about the rocker she specified for her client's nursery. Since the Eames Rocker is a classic, Valorie felt that it would be perfect for the room. Apparently people were smaller when the Eames were designing furniture! This post lead to a discussion between Steve and me about all of things we have learned during our years of design.
Image via Visual Vamp.
So we have decided to start a series of posts call "What we've learned". This first post is about what we have learned about vent grilles/registers.
This is the beauty that most builders use.
Steve started thinking about what registers could be when he was working on a home that was built in the 1920's. These are the grilles that were used in that home. The originals were cast out of metal. We replicated them in plaster for a number of rooms in this home.
We loved them so much that we used them for our own home.
Here is one of our plaster grilles in our wood ceiling in a picture of our living room taken a couple years ago. What did we learn? Plaster grilles weren't such a great idea on wood! When the wood expanded, the grilles started cracking.
Thank goodness for Pacific Register! Pacific Register can water jet any pattern out of metal. Here are the new metal registers in our bathroom...
and in our dining room. We put the ugly adjustable grilles flush with the framing. The decorative grille were installed on top of the dry wall.
Over the years, their patterns have expanded. Here is the pattern we used in the Cliffwood home.
Pacific Register has many patterns, like their "clover pattern", that come in a variety of sizes.
The Clover Grille "super sized"!
This is a register design that Steve recreated from the original Santa Barbara Biltmore Hotel registers.
Another example of Pacific Register's beautiful work.
Another 1920's home that Steve worked on was filled with these beauties...
Steve used the originals as inspiration for the new registers that were used in the home...
Pacific Register has a kit that allows the grille to be flush with the plaster. So pretty!
Although more limited in their options, Reggio Registers is another company that creates beautiful grilles. We used this one in our home in Oxnard.
A few other tips:
1. Limit the sizes of grilles in your home. 6" x 14" looks nice as do 8" x 10"
2. For the best ventilation, always have a supply and return in each room. It also keeps the ventilation system quieter.
3. Bronze or wood registers look great in floors.
I hope that you can learn from our mistakes and the research that followed. It's all part of the design process.
xo
Brooke
