Bellevue Hills

Bellevue Hills sits on a hillside lot in Bellevue, Washington, where a full-scope renovation transformed an existing home into a three-level contemporary residence.

A house this size on a slope can read as three houses stacked on top of each other. This one reads as one, because the grade sets the plan instead of the plan fighting the grade.

Expansive black-framed casement windows wrap every elevation, while the home steps with the grade so each level opens directly to the landscape.

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The design layers four exterior materials: brick cladding, vertical wood shiplap, Hardie panel, and dark-painted metal. They sit beneath gabled roof forms with standing-seam metal accents and solar panels.

Four materials on one house is usually one too many. The window is what holds them. The same black frame repeats on every elevation without a single variation, so the eye reads one building and not four surfaces.

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The entry is the tallest room in the house.

The main floor centers on an open great room, dining, and kitchen volume with 10-foot ceilings and sliding-door access to a covered deck overlooking the rear yard. A double-height foyer with a sculptural three-run staircase anchors the entry.

The stair is the sculpture, not something sculptural placed on it. Its three runs turn through the void so the height reads from every landing, not only from the floor.

The kitchen is built around one curve. A veined stone island turns against the straight run of floor-to-ceiling oak pantry cabinetry, and that single move keeps a long room from reading as a corridor.

A second kitchen sits out of sight behind the pantry wall. It absorbs the work of entertaining, so the room you actually see stays clear. Marble backsplashes, brass hardware, and dark metal window frames set the range of the palette, and wide-plank hardwood carries it across the floor.

Ten-foot ceilings hold the main floor as one volume, and sliding doors open it to a covered deck above the rear yard. Every elevation is glazed, so the yard stays in view from the kitchen and the light moves across the room through the day. Solar panels sit on the standing-seam roof, and a two-car garage tucks into the grade beside the entry.

The upper floor holds the primary suite and three more bedrooms, five in the house counting the one downstairs. The suite is arranged around a fireplace, with walk-in closets and a spa bathroom opening off it.

The palette does not change at the top of the stairs. Light oak cabinetry and wide-plank hardwood sit against marble, brass hardware, and dark metal window frames, the same set as downstairs, so the suite reads as part of the house rather than a separate apartment.

The basement is not a basement in the usual sense. On this slope it walks out to a covered patio and holds a recreation room anchored by a fireplace, a wood-paneled sauna, a second dining room, and the fifth bedroom.

Five bathrooms and a powder room run through the house, and none of them change the rules. Oak, stone, brass, and dark metal repeat from the entry to the lowest level, which is what makes five thousand square feet feel like one house rather than three.