An East Austin Lighting Workshop & Living Space
Name: Buck Hubach and Nathan Warner, owners of Warbach Lighting & Design
Location: East Austin, Texas
Size: 2750 square feet
Years lived in: Renting 1 year
Nathan Warner and Buck Hubach’s lighting designs — simple and complex, modern and geometric — are stylishly brightening homes and businesses around Austin (and more). Their “shouse” (as they call it) is a character-filled space on Austin’s East Side, industrial-looking and a mix of both their design philosophies. It’s a surprisingly homey, multi-functional space that plays the roles of home, showroom and work space.
It’s hard enough making any home feel warm and welcoming, but when your home is full of industrial metal tools, it’s even more impressive. The talented design duo pulled it off by including modern, streamlined living areas like a long, narrow kitchen with plenty of seating for guests and a dark and dramatic shower surround (with the best light fixture to ever grace someone’s shower probably ever).
Each of them has a small bedroom to call their own (with no windows, the bedrooms are artificially lit during the day, but perfectly dark sleep spaces at night). A tiny but boldly painted outdoor corner is a nice hangout spot while they indulge in a typical Texas dinner (barbecue and Lone Star). With the space’s door rolled open most days, this is the kind of place that they can entertain important clients in as easily as welcome whatever friend stops by unannounced.
Apartment Therapy Survey:
Our Style: Creative modern industrial
Inspiration: To make what we think is cool and sustain an artistic based business.
Favorite Element: How multi-functional it is. It’s a shop, showroom, and living space. We call it the shouse.
Biggest Challenge: Space organization. Everything seems to always find the right space but sometimes it’s challenging to fit everything you want vs. everything you need.
What Friends Say: Most love the diversity of it… But the first thing people say when they walk in is “its so clean in here for a shop!”
Biggest Embarrassment: We have a mouse that we named Wilson and we feed him bagels off of a 300lb. solid piece of marble.
Proudest DIY: The shower. Four solid sheets of 11-gauge steel that we designed and seam welded together. And the light fixture we built for it is amazing. And with a 50-gallon hot water heater, its my favorite place to be in the shop.
Biggest Indulgence: Tools.
Best Advice: Do what you think looks best. At the end of the day, you are the one who will have to look at it.
Thanks, Nathan and Buck!
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Re-edited from a tour originally published in 2014 – AB