Interior Designer’s West Vancouver Home Wine Cellar Dances with Style with Traditional Knotty Alder Wood Wine Racks

When you’re an interior designer, and you’re looking for the best company in your hometown of West Vancouver to help you design and build a wine room in your residence, you choose Blue Grouse Wine Cellars. We were flattered to work on a project where the design was so firmly in the client’s mind’s eye. Our major building responsibility was constructing traditional wood wine racks in the large room. The end result is a fun play on style.

A Designer’s Vision for Her Own Personal Home Wine Cellar

We at Blue Grouse Wine Cellars work with a lot of different types of clients. A lot of homeowners need guidance in helping them visualize what they want. Many first-time wine cellar builders don’t know what kind of budget to expect. Some have budgetary concerns. Some don’t. Some have ventured into extensive research on wine cellars. Some are coming to us as their first source of information.

Fortunately, we can do anything that is possible (within the confines of the laws of physics and today’s economy). So we are willing to work with all of our clients to help them find the solutions that fit them, their ideas, their desires, and their financial plan.

A Play On Traditional and Contemporary Design Conventions

This residential project is unique in that the owner of the home is an interior designer. There was a little more guidance than usual for this project from the owner, given that she is an industry professional.

This home wine cellar flirts with the conventions of traditional and modern design. It uses the established elements that have been used for centuries and then simplifies them with straighter lines and less baroque ornamentation. The result is a wine room that nods to the traditional expectations while achieving a more modern and awake atmosphere.

Luxury Features—Planned Over a Long Time

The designer planned her design ideas over a lengthy period. This house is a high-end, luxury, single-family home. She envisioned dark rich looking millwork to accompany a contemporary air. She helped design the racking layout. The owner also chose the beautiful flooring, light fixture, and ceiling detail.

Wine Cellar Cathedral

This Wine Cellar holds up to 334 bottles. It measures 102” wide x 87 ½” long x 96” high. This racking extends across each long wall of the wine room, from floor to ceiling. The ceiling elevates even more in the middle of the chamber for a cathedral-like effect.

At the top floats a magnificent metal-crafted chandelier. This simplified adornment, at the upper-most part of the church-like wine room, once again demonstrates a more contemporary approach to European imagery.

The flooring is also wood, but organized into an artful pattern, like you’d see on the floor of a great hall or basilica, yet simplified, framed with unexpectedly white lines—bringing the fashionable into what could be considered stuffy.

There is a door, chosen by the owner, on each end of the wine room, allowing the homeowner to walk straight through.

West Vancouver Home Features Pastoral/Traditional Wood Wine Racks

The racking, constructed from knotty alder wood with a deep brown stain, achieves the old-style character desired by the owner. No lacquer was applied, giving it that rustic texture.

Well lit, custom racks by wine cellar experts like Blue Grouse Wine Cellars can showcase a collection of high-quality wine. They can also efficiently facilitate bulk wine storage through rectangular bins for wood cases and diamond bins.

Well lit, custom racks by wine cellar experts like Blue Grouse Wine Cellars can showcase a collection of high-quality wine. They can also efficiently facilitate bulk wine storage through rectangular bins for wood cases and diamond bins.

When starting a project such as this, we need to know what kind of wines the owner collects.

• Do they purchase by the bottle or by the case?
• Do they have magnum bottles, which are the double size?
• Do they store half size for dessert wines?
• Do they need storage for wood cases?

Storage Features of the Wine Racks

With the information obtained from the owner, we were able to recommend specific features to the rack design. These wine racks combine a wide variety of options for the different wine storage types:

• Diamond bins for bulk storage.
• Individual bottle slots.
• Large rectangular bins to house wine in wood cases.
• A display row is running horizontally through the middle of the racking to highlight exceptional bottles.
• There are also arch niches on each side of the room to add design interest and provide a countertop area for organizing bottles.
• The client is currently storing and displaying scotch on the countertops.

Lighting That is Safe for Wine and Adds Drama to the Rack Displays

Lighting is a more important factor than a lot of homeowners typically think.

On the one hand, lighting adds an important dramatic effect to the wine cellar racking. It allows you to display your wine in spectacular fashion to your guests. In this home, to this interior designer, the lighting was clearly recognized as an important aspect of the visual strategy. There is accent lighting within the racking—a spotlight at the top of each archway, and strip lighting, behind a valance on top of the display row to help highlight prized bottles.

Heat added to a wine cellar is also a concern. So the type of lights chosen is of utmost importance. All of the lighting fixtures in this wine room are LED. This choice will prevent excess heat in the cellar.

Build Something Personal in Your Home

We were delighted to have the opportunity to partner with this design expert—to help her bring something so personal into reality. You can see it in the end results—a sophisticated home wine cellar that uses wood wine racks to communicate both traditional and modern motifs.

Whether you live in West Vancouver or surrounding towns, feel free to consult with a design expert from Blue Grouse Wine Cellars to bring about your very private vision to life as well.