The home bar is the most quietly architectural piece of furniture in the contemporary residence. Done well, it composes the room it sits in; done poorly, it sits in the room. The decisions that distinguish the two are taken before the cabinet is ever specified.
Proportion and placement
A serious home bar begins as a question of proportion. A cabinet sized to the standard residential ceiling reads as a piece of casework; a cabinet sized to a generous ceiling reads as architecture. Specify the height to the room. Eighty-four to ninety-six inches for the considered residence, taller where the ceiling permits.
Placement matters as much as size. The bar belongs against a long uninterrupted wall, away from the room's traffic path, and visible on the diagonal from the entry. A bar placed in line with the entry reads as service; a bar placed across the room reads as a destination.
“The bar placed across the room becomes a destination. Placed beside the door, it becomes service.”
Material, short, warm, repeating
The material palette is short and repeating. Solid walnut or quartersawn oak for the cabinet body; brushed or unlacquered brass for hardware and shelving rails; mirrored glass for the back panel; honed stone for the counter where the bar serves as well as displays. These materials age into the room rather than against it.
Avoid lacquered finishes, decorative veneers, and the various contemporary composites sold as luxury cabinetry. They photograph well at delivery and fail to develop the patina that distinguishes the long-lived piece.
Lighting, layered, warm, dimmed
The bar is an evening piece. Lighting is layered and dimmable: integrated warm-LED uplighting at the underside of each shelf to render crystal correctly; a single picture light or accent fixture above the cabinet to anchor the piece in the room; and a perimeter wash that returns to ambient when the bar is not in use.
Specify two thousand four hundred to two thousand seven hundred Kelvin throughout. Cooler temperatures render crystal poorly and turn the bar into a retail display.
The working bar
A serious bar holds the working inventory of the residence: forty to sixty bottles, eight to twelve sets of stemware, decanters, jiggers, openers, linen, and the small implements that hospitality asks. Specify shelving sized to the actual bottles in use. Bordeaux's shoulder, the tall gin, the squat bourbon, the magnum.
A refrigerated drawer below the cabinet, sized for ice and mixers, is the difference between a bar that is used and one that is admired. Specify it from the outset; retrofitting refrigeration into a finished piece is rarely satisfactory.
A note on the long horizon
A correctly specified bar becomes the quiet centre of the entertaining room. The surface at which the evening begins and the piece around which the conversation collects. The cabinet outlives the room it first enters.
Our House composes bar cabinets and back-bar millwork to room. Write to support@hevoran.com with measured drawings.
Hevoran Editorial is the in-house editorial desk of the House. A small group of designers, collectors, and writers who compose the rooms we make and the writing we publish.