The New American Home 2025
Stephanie Osborn and Yeny Roa worked together on a showhouse in Henderson, Nevada.
With a background in construction management (primarily in the luxury custom home market), designer Stephanie Osborn begins every project by creating a lighting plan, focusing on scale and placement of hard fixtures. “I always start with the blueprints and framing diagrams,” she says. “Making those selections early on helps to set everybody up for success." It was kismet, then, that she partnered with Visual Comfort lighting designer Yeny Roa on The New American Home 2025, a 9,047 square foot new build near Las Vegas, built for the International Builders’ Show.
Osborn’s mission was to achieve “refined elegance,” which she achieved through an eclectic mix of Visual Comfort products. For her part, Roa kept a trained eye on the biological component of lighting. “Lighting design isn’t about drama, it’s about balance,” she says. “Ultimately, I aim to bring to deeper sense of well-being to every space I collaborate on." Read on for a look at how lighting design helped to make the home’s key spaces shine.
Challenge 1: How to Light a Three-Story Stairwell
To complement the home's three-level floating stair system, Yeny Roa suggested the Brox Chandelier system, a customizable multi-tier design that enhances the stairwell's volume without diminishing the architecture's impact.
Challenge 2: How to Light an Asymmetrical Dining Room
The house's sloping rooflines meant that the dining room table couldn’t be centered. Stepping back to consider the atmosphere, Roa gravitated toward the angles of the Captra chandelier help to offset the asymmetry, embracing the room’s architecture and intended use to create a more balanced look for the room.
Challenge 3: How to Light a Wine Room With Stone Walls and a Glass Ceiling
With its sleek take on a traditional feature, the wine room is a showstopper—one that presented quite the lighting challenge. To light the space without interrupting the ambiance, Roa specified Essence linear lighting to be installed behind the wine racks. “Rather than showing off the light itself, we’re showing what a thoughtful lighting plan can do,” she says.
One takeaway from the collaboration was a renewed commitment to architectural lighting. Roa describes its impact this way: “Using only recessed or only decorative lighting has a flatting effect – there’s very little dimension, which means nothing feels emphasized.
Working to translate the interior designer’s vision for the space required Roa to anticipate all the ways the house would be lived in, and she designed accordingly. “A tailored architectural lighting plan adds depth and interest, bringing out the finishes of the space and making a home more comfortable, beautiful and enjoyable. Great lighting should feel natural, but there's so much intention there, too.”
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