SOUTHLIGHT DECK STUDIO · MIRO TERRACE & LATCHFIELD · DRAWN, PRICED, BUILT · SINCE 2015
A deck is a drawing before it is a structure. We insist on the drawing.
Southlight designs outdoor rooms the way architects design the indoor kind — sun studies on your actual elevation, cantilevers run against span tables, rail heights to the letter of the code, composite and cedar priced on the same sheet — and hands you a fixed number with the drawing attached. The studio keeps the drafting table; the crews keep the saws.
Studio on Miro Terrace, Thursdays to Sundays · 340 decks drawn and 289 built · every drawing yours to keep · (555) 016-8852 · studio@southlightdeck.example
Services
The studio’s four services
01
The sun study — $0 with any build
We map where the light actually falls on your yard, hour by hour across the seasons you plan to eat outside — because the deck that faces the view into the west sun is a beautiful room nobody can sit in after five. The study decides the orientation; the view gets a say after the physics.
02
The drawing — $340, credited to the build
A scaled plan of your own yard with the deck drawn onto it: joist directions, footing positions, cantilever depths against the span tables, rail heights noted to the code section, materials scheduled. Yours to keep whoever builds it — and what we build from, to the sixteenth.
03
Cantilevered overlooks — from $74/sq ft
The drama of a deck floating past its posts, earned with arithmetic: two feet of overhang per sixteen of backspan as the rule, engineered past the rule where the drop demands it. The Terrace’s best evenings are had on platforms that needed a drawing to exist.
04
Covered rooms & pergolas — from $7,200
Shade computed like everything else: rafter spacing chosen by the hour you eat, snow load carried on paper, posts footed to frost, and the cedar or steel frame drawn at the same scale as the deck it shelters. A roof is a promise about weather; we print the math behind it.
The studio sheet — 2026 season
Composite deck, drawn & builtfrom $63/sq ft
Capped boards, hidden clips, picture-frame border
Cedar deck, drawn & builtfrom $55/sq ft
5/4×6 western red, plugged screws, oiled at handover
The drawing alone$340, credited
Scaled plan, materials list, fixed number · yours whoever builds
Sun study$0 with any build
Hour-by-hour light map of your actual yard
Cable rail, code packagefrom $148/ln ft
Heights to section, 4-in sphere tested, blocking in
Pergola, engineeredfrom $7,200
Rafters to the 40-psf snow load, posts to frost
Why the sheet is laid out this way
Both materials, one sheet, no favourites
Composite and cedar appear on the same page because a studio that sells one of them is a supplier with a drafting table. The drawing schedules materials by zone — capped boards where the deck lives hard, cedar where the evening is the point — and the sun study sits above both, because orientation is free and nothing else on the sheet is. The fixed number at the bottom is the number; the crew that builds it is ours, and the drawing is yours either way.
The studio sequence
From consult to first evening
Five movements, the same at every commission — the only variable is how stubborn the light turns out to be.
The consult
Ninety minutes at the studio or the yard: how you eat, who you feed, what the yard does in April. We leave with a programme, not a brochure.
The sun study
Your elevation and the seasonal light, mapped hour by hour. Orientation is the first line of the drawing and the cheapest decision to get right.
The drawing
Scaled, structural and complete — footing positions, cantilevers, rail heights, materials, and one fixed number at the bottom. You approve paper, never promises.
The build
Footings to frost, frame to the drawing, surfaces gapped for valley air. The crew builds what was drawn, and the drawing is on site every day it does.
The first evening
We photograph at golden hour — the same hour the sun study predicted — and the studio files the pair together. That is the whole quality system.
Commissions & handovers
Drawn here, built here
Six commissions from the drafting table, each photographed at the hour its own sun study predicted. The drawing files go with the houses.
Eleven seasons at the drafting table
The studio, in figures
The sun study told us our planned deck faced the west sun into exactly the hour we eat — we would have built a beautiful room we used at lunch. They turned it nine degrees, cantilevered the seat over the drop, and the drawing was in our inbox before the price was. Two summers on, the six-o’clock shade arrives like a scheduled train.
We took the drawing to two other builders for comparison and hired Southlight anyway — the plan was that complete, down to the rail-height code notes. Worth saying: they still handed us the file and offered to let the other crews bid on it. That is either confidence or ethics, and at this point I think it is both.
The five from the consult
Asked before the drafting table
Why does the drawing cost money when everyone quotes free?
Because a free quote is a number someone invented in a truck, and a drawing is a document your build can be audited against — footing positions, span checks, rail heights to the code section, materials scheduled. It is four hours of real work, it is credited to the build, and it is yours whoever hangs the boards.
What does the sun study change, honestly?
Orientation, more often than anything else: the deck that faces the view west is a sauna at six, and the one that hides from the morning sun is cold at seven. The study costs you nothing with a build and saves the most expensive mistake in outdoor design — a room built for a clock it did not consult.
Composite or cedar — what does the studio recommend?
Both, priced on the same sheet: composite where the deck lives hard and gets cleaned never; cedar where you want the smell and will oil it every second spring. The ten-year money lands close. What we will not do is sell you cedar under a grill or composite where only cedar will do — the drawing schedules materials by zone.
How do you handle rail code on a designed deck?
As a design input, not a checkbox: above thirty inches of grade the guard is thirty-six inches minimum — forty-two on the tall read — with the four-inch sphere rule throughout. Cable, cap or glass changes the look, never the numbers, and every drawing carries the section references for the inspector.
Do you build what other studios draw?
Happily — a third of our builds start as someone else’s paper, checked against the span tables and the frost line before we price it. And if your studio drew it, we will tell you what in it we envy. Good drawings make cheaper builds.
The studio on Miro Terrace is open Thursdays to Sundays · (555) 016-8852 · studio@southlightdeck.example · the sun study is free with any build
Start with the sun, not the brochure
Send the address and one photo of the yard. The sun study that comes back maps your actual light across the hours you plan to eat — and the drawing follows from it. studio@southlightdeck.example