Sagaponack Home Proves Sustainability And Interior Design Can Go Hand In Hand

Most people think sustainability is a concern for one type of person and interior design is for another, Evan Mason says, but she believes the two can and should work hand in glove.

The Sagaponack resident’s own home off Gibson Lane is a case study in how the principles of sustainability — namely, efficiency and reduced impact on the environment — can be applied to interior design. During a recent tour of her home, Ms. Mason explained how she worked with her architect and builder to reduce the house’s consumption of resources while creating a healthier environment for her family.

Ms. Mason believes that sustainability does not have to come at the expense of aesthetics and style and says that homeowners can reduce the costs of running their homes while being more comfortable with better air quality.

She is a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Associate, a certification from the U.S. Green Building Council that required her to demonstrate an understanding of the most current green building principles and practices. She also went to urban planning school and trained as a multifamily building analyst. She moonlights for Agarabi Engineering in Brooklyn, conducting building condition surveys, and as the pandemic is winding down she is rebooting her past interior design practice, now with an emphasis on sustainability.

She explained that she has always loved architecture and buildings and seeing how things are made, and having grown up in Philadelphia, where there is an environmentally aware culture, she’s long been interested in sustainability. All of her past experiences informed her choices in the renovation of her own home, which she and her husband, attorney Garrard Beeney, purchased in 2009.

One of the most important things to tackle in terms of sustainability is lighting, and Ms. Mason has implemented a number of ways to take advantage of the revered natural Hamptons light and to use less electricity. The most creative and striking detail in her home concerning light is a glass floor. Located at the base of the stairs to the second story, a glass octagon lets sunlight down into the lower level. A small table sits on the center of the octagon, with a pair of clear chairs.

“I like to play with light from an interior design perspective,” she said.

She further took advantage of natural light by choosing paint with a slight sheen and decorating with mirrors while being conscious of the direction of the sun.

All of the light fixtures in the house use energy efficient light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. Ms. Mason said LEDs once had a reputation for having an ugly, very harsh light, but that’s no longer the case. “Now you can get soft and warm, and bright and daylight, and blue and yellow — you can get all sorts of things,” she said.

A number of attractive and interesting designer light fixtures from Ochre, Sonneman, Vaughn, Arteriors, Williams-Sonoma and Robert Abbey throughout the house demonstrate Ms. Mason’s belief that interior design can be sensitive to sustainability.

“I tried to make the house contextual, like you could walk into this house and say, ‘Oh, yeah, this belongs in the Hamptons,’” she said.

LEDs are also used to make an onyx bathroom sink glow, and Ms. Mason pointed out that in every bathroom in the house, the ventilation fans are on timers.

“It drives me nuts when you have ventilation fans and people, of course, forget to turn them off,” she said. “And it goes on 24/7 and then the motor dies — and then you have no ventilation.”

Hallway lights are controlled by motion sensors, which offer both convenience and reduced electricity usage.

A motion sensor or a timer costs just $20, Ms. Mason noted. “It’s not a big, fancy system,” she said. “I tried to avoid big fancy systems as much as I could.”

To keep the house cool in summer, she sought to use ceiling fans and windows as much as possible. Even the front entry has a screen door, which most people don’t do, she said. Cooling the house by keeping the doors and windows open also means she can enjoy the sounds of the ocean nearby, she pointed out.

Using what one has instead of buying new is another sustainability principle Ms. Mason practices. This includes reupholstering beat up furniture instead of replacing it, and designing with family heirlooms, including a chest her grandfather made and a buffet that was in her childhood home.

Antiques can sometimes look out of place in a contemporary home, but she has ways of overcoming that. For instance, she added mirrors to the shelves of the buffet.

“I didn’t want to get rid of it, but I thought, ‘Wow, this is very dark for the Hamptons,’” she said. “And I’m also into historic preservation even though this isn’t an old house. I used the mirrors to both lighten it up and make it a little funky.”

The home renovation also reused hinges, handles and French doors to reduce waste and save money. “They were perfectly fine — there was no reason to put them in the dumpster,” Ms. Mason said.

She credits her architect, Amado Ortiz of East Hampton, and her builder, John Barrows of P3 Builders in Wainscott, with enacting her ideas and contributing their own. “We really did work as a team,” she said. “It was a real collaboration.”

Mr. Barrows brought his expertise on building envelopes and insulation. His team used cranes to install structural insulated panels, known as SIPs, to ensure there are no gaps in the insulation.

In the kitchen, Mr. Ortiz’s idea of using a glass wall instead of a typical backsplash brings in more natural light.

The house was originally a ranch, and then another owner added a tower with a small deck. Now, there is a large, rooftop deck — with views of a preserved farm field and the ocean — accessible via a skylight at the top of the stairs that opens at the touch of a button. Ms. Mason calls this the pièce de résistance.

She noted that the skylight is not a sustainable feature because, while it lets in valuable light, it is not completely airtight. Otherwise, the house is “extremely tight with very little air infiltration,” she said.

Houses that are built tight to reduce heating and air conditioning costs can run into unintended consequences that stem from inadequate ventilation. To address that concern, Ms. Mason’s house has an energy recovery ventilator, or ERV, that allows for air exchange while not expending extra energy to heat or cool the fresh air.

She also wanted an ERV to correct for humidity, which she added is a good feature to have while living near the ocean.

“It’s actually not new technology,” she said. “It’s just new for out here. It’s really been around for quite a while.”

Another way Ms. Mason ensured the indoor air quality would be high was to only use materials that are free of volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs. She said she chose natural materials that don’t “off-gas,” such as formaldehyde-free cabinetry.

“It’s used a lot in adhesives, so basically, where there are adhesives, there are VOCs,” she said. “… If you have a very tight house, you can get headaches, you can get dizzy, and it’s not good for the environment.”

In the lower level, there is a wine room that was also designed to be especially airtight.

“We had to make sure it was really well insulated because I’ve seen wine rooms out here that are not well insulated, which is bad for the wine and bad for energy efficiency,” she said. “Temperature fluctuations are not good for wine.”

Durability of materials is also very important to her, she said. For instance, she chose Taj Mahal Quartzite countertops over a material like marble because it will hold up to grandkids and party guests.

“If you don’t really specify you’re looking for a very durable surface you’ll get marks on it and then you eventually want to throw it out and start all over again,” she said. “So durability is really key for me.”

In her work conducting building condition surveys she examines the structure, the mechanicals, the pipes and even the kitchen cabinets. “It’s basically a building’s health,” she said. Her studies and her work have attuned her to think about the longevity of what goes into a home and the maintenance and replacement costs.

“I like to think about how I spend money and how I spend my clients’ money,” she said. “Everybody has their splurges or the things that are really important to them.”

Ms. Mason is on the board of the New York League of Conservation Voters and volunteers for other environmental organizations as well. Her interior design practice, Sustainable Homes + Yards, will donate 10 percent of profits to sustainable causes such as the League of Conservation Voters, Habitat for Humanity and the Peconic Land Trust. For more information, visit shandyny.com.