Guided by a passion for expansive windows and luxe, light-filled spaces, builder Rob Wyman enlists a team of pros to help create his family’s new St. George home. Photos by Truss Media and Utah Valley Video.
When a talented builder creates a home for himself and his family, it’s a safe bet the residence will be filled with unique features and surprising details. That’s certainly true for contractor Rob Wyman who, joined by his wife Carrie, recently created a new St. George home for their family.
“It’s always fun building your own home as a contractor,” says Wyman, principal of RL Wyman Design + Create. “It gives you the chance to dig deep and push the boundaries.” Having built more than a dozen homes for his family, Wyman had plenty of experience doing exactly that. “This is the thirteenth we have created for ourselves and it is, by far, our favorite,” he says. And why not? The new home sits on a 2-acre site that offers plenty of space for all they wanted, including large comfortable rooms, high ceilings, large windows and resort-style living, indoors and out.
Wyman worked with architectural designer Shawn Patten and designers Yvonne Christensen and Nicole Speirs of House West Design to fashion the new domicile. Patten understood exactly what the Wymans wanted, having worked on many projects with them in the past, including their previous residence. It, like the new home, was featured in the St. George Area Parade of Homes.
Guided by his clients, Patten devised an ambitious architectural plan geared toward large, light-filled rooms with a strong connection to the outdoors. He designed the home to be as narrow as possible, allowing for light and views to emanate through enormous windows into key spaces from both the front and back of the house, rather than from only a single direction. And to maintain an even flow of natural light throughout the rooms, the team installed many interior windows to replace light-blocking walls. “They open up the main living area, but we still have a sense of separation,” Wyman says.
Patten also positioned the high-style kitchen at a 90-degree angle from the opening living and dining areas, creating an L-shaped great room rather than the conventional rectangular configuration seen in many homes. “It allows light and views to flow freely from the front-of-the-house kitchen into the rear-of-the-house living without obstruction,” he explains.
The geometry of the St. George home isn’t the only architectural element the team thoughtfully considered. Scale played an important part as well. “Because the home is so large, everything had to be upscaled so that the proportions are correct,” Patten explains. With ceiling heights soaring to 20 feet in key spaces, the size of elements like windows, doors, fireplaces, cabinetry and furnishings needed to be similarly exaggerated.
In the kitchen, for example, a street-facing gridded window measures nearly 20-feet tall and 16-feet wide with individual panes that Patten skillfully sized to suit the feature’s broad dimensions. Nearby In the living room, a 16-foot-wide sliding wall of glass doors is similarly expansive. “When the windows are scaled correctly with the house, it’s impossible to tell how large the home is,” Wyman says.
To create the warm and inviting ambiance the Wymans craved, designers Christensen and Speirs curated a mix of muted colors, natural materials and plush textures that “add a feeling of comfort and intimacy,” says Christensen, co-owner of House West Design. In the open living room, the duo focused the large furniture grouping on the “gem of the room,” the fireplace. Organically shaped and clad in hand-applied plaster, the feature soars 18 feet high. “We worked hand in hand with the framers until we figured out the size and scale that would work best in the space,” Rob recalls. Like the custom range hood in the nearby kitchen, it boasts an irregular form and adobe-like finish that softens the interior’s hard and clean lines. The rounded form of the uniquely curved staircase does the same.
Throughout the home, the decor is a lesson in relaxed luxury. There is a chic, spacious kitchen and windowed butler’s pantry, a plush primary suite with indoor and outdoor showers, and a glass-sided swimming pool with waterfalls. The list of unique elements is long.
Of all of the luxuriously outfitted interior spaces, perhaps the most memorable are those that open to the resort-like pool and broad patio. A 20-foot-wide pocket glass door opens the large theater/game room to inviting outdoor living areas, as do two walls of multi-slide doors that allow a nearby outdoor kitchen to perform as an open-air or enclosed gathering space for year-round enjoyment.
There, overlooking the pool and lavish landscape, the Wymans frequently get together, entertain and soak up the views. The unique house is exactly what they had envisioned it could be. “We took a lot of liberties here,” says Wyman, “and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome.”
See more from the Utah Style & Design Fall 2023 issue here.
