Optional Design Features
Tailor your timber frame kit home with design features that enhance light, character and modern living.
Optional design features allow you to personalise your timber frame kit home and shape the atmosphere, flow and character of your space. These enhancements can be built into your design from the start, helping you create a home that suits your lifestyle and vision.
Feature Glazing
Feature glazing introduces brightness, openness and strong architectural impact. Whether you’re designing around views or bringing more daylight into your main living areas, the right glazing choices can make a significant difference.
If you’d like to explore ideas in more detail, you may find our article on how feature glazing elevates home design particularly helpful. It looks at different glazing styles and where they work best within a self‑build layout.
Porches & Peaks
Porches and peaks add shape, character and a welcoming entrance to your home. They work well with both traditional and modern styles and are often chosen early in the design process by self‑builders.
For a closer look at how these elements can enhance both exterior and interior design, our guide to porches and peaks walks through popular styles and where each option is best suited.
Feature Interiors
Feature interiors let self‑builders shape the light, height and character of their home. These choices influence how open your spaces feel, how rooms connect, and how daylight moves throughout the layout.
How Roof Structure Influences Interior Features
Many interior features — especially those that add height or extra glazing — rely on specific roof designs. To achieve the look you want, you can choose between two roof forms that replace standard trusses.
1. Vaulted Ceiling
A vaulted ceiling uses a raised tie truss instead of a standard fink truss. From the wall head, the ceiling slopes upward on both sides for around 1.2m before meeting a flat central area. This creates a higher, more spacious profile shaped like half a hexagon, ideal for living spaces that need extra height.
2. Cathedral Ceiling
A cathedral ceiling removes prefabricated trusses entirely. Instead, individual rafters rise from the wall head to a structural ridge beam. Wider spans may need a purlin halfway up the roof to support the rafters. This inverted “V” shape opens the room right up to the ridge and works beautifully with feature glazing or open‑plan layouts.
Origin Internal Doors for Self‑Build Homes
Origin Internal Doors add slim‑framed, modern glazing to your interior layout and work especially well in brighter, taller spaces. Their steel‑look style suits home offices, kitchens, hallways and open‑plan zones, and they help daylight flow naturally between rooms.
You can learn more about the full Origin range here.
