SolaceThree-storey family home · Wareemba

Wareemba is close to the city and still a suburb many people haven't discovered. The site was bought below market value, and research into what suits the location shaped the brief from the start: a refined family home that feels more generous than its budget suggests.

The design raises the house on its block, which draws natural light through it from morning to night and gives the main bedroom a possible water view. Planted terraces step down to the street, and aluminium batten screens give privacy.

The home runs over three levels, including a basement. A full-glass lift travels between floors without blocking the light, and a marble-clad spiral stair rises through a double-height living space that feels open and full of air. In the evening you can sit by the fireplace with the pool right beside you, and barely a line between inside and out.

Downstairs are a wine cellar, a gym and a cinema room. Off the main kitchen, a butler's kitchen handles long lunches and big family cooking, and skylights keep the house bright and calm.

Solace is under construction: a five-bedroom home over three levels, with a basement, a glass lift and a pool beside the living room. The images are visualisations of the design.

A basement changes a house project more than almost any other single item. Digging down needs a geotechnical investigation, careful waterproofing and drainage, and protection for the houses next door. Where excavation goes below a neighbour's footings, a development consent generally carries a condition that you protect the neighbouring building and, if needed, underpin it at your own cost. It's also sensible to record the condition of the neighbouring houses (a dilapidation report) before work starts.

A basement affects the approval route too. The state's fast-track Housing Code allows only small basements, so a full basement level usually means a development application to council.

A home lift is far easier to plan in than to add later. It usually needs a shaft, a shallow pit below the lowest stop and some headroom above the top one, plus its own power and service access. A glass lift can keep light moving through a stair void, but the structure, the stair and the lift have to be coordinated from the first sketches.

Three levels also raise the questions council looks at on any tall house: overall height, overshadowing of the neighbours, and overlooking from upper windows and terraces. Screens, window placement and planting do much of that work, and they're best designed in from the start.