Innholdsfortegnelse for August/September 2021 i homestyle

“Think about curating your spaces based on how you want them to make you feel.” I regularly have conversations with people about their interiors, and you wouldn’t believe how often I hear the words “but the house isn’t finished”. My usual response is that the only time a house is ‘finished’ is when you’ve sold it. In all other instances, there really is no finish line. The sense of urgency to get things ‘done’ is a bit of a modern affliction that sometimes sees us acquiring stuff for the sake of filling gaps, rather than making well-considered purchases. My advice is to slow down and take your time seeking out things you truly love, letting your interior evolve to reflect who you are and the way you actually like to…

Surf culture and art deco wouldn’t seem to have much in common, yet at Sydney’s Harbord Hotel, they’ve been brought together in an expertly eclectic interior. Refurbished by Alexander & Co in a palette of nostalgic hues enhanced by tons of texture, the bar, restaurant and event spaces of this century-old beachside pub feature a synergistic mix of décor details that combine to create above all a lived-in feel. Consider using paint, wallpaper or fabric to emulate this cool cut-out collage wall treatment, or style up your spaces with pieces like these:…

The stylist Dulux colour ambassador Alex Walls What seems like a lifetime ago, I used to enjoy travelling the world for my job, but there was nothing better than coming home to New Zealand. As I flew in, I’d gaze at the lush green landscape with its patchwork of farms and appreciate the contrast to the concrete jungles of other countries, quietly hoping we’d be able to keep it that way. I’m always inspired by nature when it comes to interiors. Given many of us aren’t so lucky as to have homes with views of bush and rolling hills, I love the idea of bringing that kind of freshness inside. With this look, I’ve created a natural backdrop by grounding the grey-green of Dulux Hoon Hay on one wall with…

At the top of a winding staircase above a dairy on Auckland’s Karangahape Road sit a couple of unassuming rooms. Once an apartment, they’ve been used as artists’ studios since the ’90s, and award-winning painter Ayesha Green is the latest to create within their walls. “The first artist to occupy this space was actually [renowned photographer] Ann Shelton and her girlfriend at the time,” says Ayesha. “They slept in one of the two rooms and worked in the other.” Ann told Ayesha a great story about how they were walking along K’ Road looking for studio spaces and saw an empty spot upstairs. The butcher in the store below owned the building and allowed them to move in, and so the artistic legacy began. Very happy to be here, Ayesha’s…

The founder of multidisciplinary Danish design brand Frama, Niels Strøyer Christophersen, is known for design that embodies the contemporary longing for the simple life, quality materials and sense of inner peace found through a mindful interior. The apartment he shares with his New Zealand-born wife Franca-Christina Christophersen in Østerbro, Copenhagen, exudes a special kind of toned-down, urban elegance and is a lesson in making a little more effort with something as important as your home and the life you live in it. Truth be told, Niels is more interested in behaviour and emotions than he is in design, the people who create it and the objects he and Franca decorate their home with. According to him, most people really only need half of what they own, and what ultimately matters…

Your ongoing happiness is in your hands when you’re renovating or building, so we advocate investing in as many seemingly minor details as possible. Of all the easily overlooked aspects of a home, door handles are up there, but consider them key players from the start and you’ll reap the rewards on the regular. Locally crafted but with a European sensibility, we can’t help but notice Windsor’s high-end Italian range. Forged and machined in Italy from top-quality brass, then hand-finished in Invercargill, this handsome selection of architectural hardware encompasses six collections of handles in rose and longplate form. To create the Italian range’s 15 different finishes, Windsor uses a variety of metal treatments that specialists then perfect by hand to create a natural patina. Bespoke but batch-processed for cohesive colour,…

Soon after my sister-in-law Suni Hermon and I launched our first range of Sphaera cold-process soap bars in 2015, customers started asking us for solid-state shampoo and conditioner products as well. Combined with our interest in new ideas and production processes, those early enquiries inspired us to create a fully resolved haircare solution — one that meets high standards of clean beauty and sustainability, is a pleasure to use, and delivers tangible results for the look, feel and health of your hair. Three years of research and development later, we’ve now released our new haircare collection. Many of us are becoming conscious of our impact on the environment and looking for ethical products that don’t compromise on performance. Suni’s and my first goal for these new products was to formulate…

GODFREY HIRST —— Flooring Godfrey Hirst believe the quintessential easygoing Kiwi lifestyle should resonate in our interiors. They’ve built a reputation as one of New Zealand’s premier carpet manufacturers and hard-flooring distributors through consistently providing consumers with innovative, high-quality and stylish floor-covering solutions. godfreyhirst.com POWERSURGE —— Homeware Elevating home essentials into artisanal accents, Powersurge’s Winter 21 collection presents a timeless suite of brass pendant lights alongside handles, mirrors and furniture. Visit the website for the full Home collection of brass furnishings and accessories, handmade in their Auckland studio. info@powersurge.co.nz powersurge.co.nz FREEDOM —— Furniture & homeware For nearly 25 years, Freedom has been sending you home with beautiful furniture and homeware at great prices — and now they’re excited to bring you new styles curated especially for you. These gorgeous pieces…

LIVE LARGE Go for broke in a single masterstroke with the latest magnificent mural-style wallpapers from local super-talent Emma Hayes. This sublime design is Daybreak, which sees swirls of paint dance across the wall, inspired by atmospheric events like dawn and the polar lights. It’s crafted by heritage manufacturers from paper sourced from FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)-certified forests and ink made from organic pigments. emmahayes.co.nz QUIET STRENGTH Packing quite the visual punch with its impeccably refined combination of lines and curves enclosing expertly balanced negative space, Powersurge’s Fall coffee table has exploded into our hearts. Elegantly juxtaposing the lightness of the composition with the weight of the solid brass, it’s a minimalist dream offered in three finishes: Light Antique (pictured), Dark Antique and Blackened. powersurge.co.nz MIX MASTERS Personalisation being the…

The past couple of years have been quite a journey for Bec Snelling of Douglas & Bec, the Auckland-based furniture and lighting brand she once ran with her father. In fact, the background to where she is today reads a bit like a Hollywood film plot. Having already reached what she believed to be her turning point, Bec was in recovery and just 30 days sober when the Douglas & Bec factory burned to the ground. But through adversity comes strength, and she decided to see it as an opportunity. So then what? I thought to myself, ‘Right, this is really clearing the wreckage of the past; this is a new beginning.’ It forced our hand on a lot of decisions we’d already been considering, but at no point did…

Miriam, why did you decide to move your family from Auckland to the Waikato’s Waipā District? My parents had made the move south a decade before, so we’d often go down to visit them or to stay at our family bach in nearby Kāwhia. Driving north back to Auckland, our hearts would sink as we sat in the motorway traffic wondering why we were driving away when we were happier there. Eventually, Stuart and I decided to make a break from the city too. We took a deep breath, put our home on the market and started the hunt for a home or piece of land to build on in or near Pirongia. What do you love about this spot? Pirongia doesn’t have any traffic lights. It has a Four…

In a world in which there’s a lot of talk about sustainability but not nearly enough walk, you can get the warm fuzzies knowing Kiwi company Bremworth is legitimately making great strides towards protecting our precious planet. They’ve been frontrunners on the carpet scene for more than 60 years now, and today they’re leaders of the pack for their commitment to natural-fibre-based products — including their rugs, which also step up the game. We’re rapt that just like their carpets, Bremworth’s rugs are designed in Aotearoa and manufactured from 100% New Zealand wool — a sustainable, biodegradable, renewable and much healthier local resource. Characterised by bold texture and earthy tones inspired by our landscapes, the Handcrafted collection is made from felted yarn for a luxuriously thick result, with a premium…

Lisa, you take an intriguing approach to your craft… The approach I’ve developed over the past 10 years at DonnellDay Architecture follows principles of intuitive design. It combines a responsiveness to the individual requirements of the client, the site and the environment with elements of biophilic design, which adopts aspects of the natural world to contribute to human health, wellbeing and performance. I think a home needs to feel as though it’s ‘meant to be’. It should gently encourage and enable people to focus on the core aspects of the architectural brief they identified as being important to them: to rest, to share meals with their family… Can you tell us a little more about intuitive design? It’s tailored around the use and experience of a space — people’s innate…

How do you make your house your home? I think it’s important to focus on making it a place in which you can truly live — day in, day out. Beyond aesthetics, decorating to create such an intentional interior is an opportunity to level up by paying extra attention to the ‘ordinary’ things you actually need and use — like your textiles. Whether it’s the pillowcases you wake up on every morning or the curtains you draw every night, buying what you really need, buying less and buying well is the first step. Caring for your pieces then becomes crucial to ensuring you get the most out of them. To help your favourite fabrics live and look lovely for longer, you need both a will and a way, and the…

Wild Child: Adventure Cooking with Kids by Sarah Glover (Prestel, $60) Yeah, inside is cool, but have you tried going outside for a proper adventure lately? Not a planned-to-the-nth-degree trip, but the kind you’d go on as a kid, when you’d just set off and see where the wind took you? Growing up in ’80s Australia, Sarah Glover didn’t spend her time in front of a screen — exploring with her siblings and friends and experimenting in the kitchen was her idea of fun. It allowed her to learn and create, and became her guide to adult life, in which she strives to retain that same spirit of possibility, discovery and daring. With this cookbook, she wants to spark your kids’ imagination while reigniting yours. In true ’80s style, the…

Hey Buster, what and where is Lamplight? It’s an independent bookstore in the award-winning Geyser Building in Auckland’s Parnell. The masterminds behind it are Melanie O’Loughlin and Courtney Smith, formerly of Unity Books. What was your design intention for the store? Books are visually noisy, so we wanted to create those lovely little moments of respite you want from a book-browsing experience — an inward cosiness that shields you from bustling Parnell Rise outside and allows the books to sing. Blocky, utilitarian forms hold the books, but are broken down into smaller parts to lighten the visual weight through the use of simple, square tiles of varying sizes. Just like the book selection, the design qualities of this store are considered, confident and there to be quietly noticed. What was…

Get the look - Build a nook new or repurpose a cupboard to become one. They work in any number of locations: for the mail and keys in your entryway, for the TV in your living room, as a study spot in a guest room… - Demarcate the space with Resene paint. Go for a bold, deep colour to accent the built form and draw your eye in, such as this copper brown Resene Cinnamon. Contrast that with a pale colour on the wall, like this dusty grey Resene Half Ash, and one that’s somewhere in between on the floor — we chose grey-green Resene Half Innocence. Use painter’s tape to ensure your lines are as exact as the architecture. - Designate the shelves for storage and display (or let…

Designer, writer and mum of two Sammy-Rose Scapens grew up between Tauranga and Christchurch in a wonderfully artistic family, with parents who encouraged individuality and innovation. She was regularly left to her own devices to make up her own games, and a lot of her time was spent with her head in a book, then debating with her parents about what she’d read. All this instilled in her an ability to imagine and think outside of her own small sphere — something she’s very grateful for today. She says books inform all areas of her life and practice, which includes Homewerk — the business she started with her partner Oliver Starr — and the services she provides via Tradespeople’s national directory of women and gender-diverse tradies. So Sammy, Homewerk sounds…

A magnificent gumtree once stood on the spot that Chelsea Thorpe calls home. As little girls, she and her sisters would swing from its branches on a swing hand-carved by their dad, high over the hillside below. Decades later, the old tree rotten and felled, her own little girls are continuing its legacy, their bright eyes embracing its view of the valley in the home Chelsea and her husband Gene Walker have built in its place. Founders of Longbush Wines, Chelsea’s parents have owned this Gisborne property for 35 years, and generously gave her and her sisters a section each. With three daughters (plus a fourth child now on the way) and budgetary contraints in mind, she and Gene imagined building a simple home on theirs that was a pleasure…

DOSE WITH THE MOST If you haven’t been using mushrooms to enhance your health, you’re a few thousand years behind the medicinal wisdom, so let’s catch you up. We’d start with these lovely Relax capsules by Auckland’s Mother Made. Containing 100% organic reishi mushrooms expertly prepared for maximum potency, they’ll stop you feeling so strung out, while supporting sleep and immunity. mothermade.co.nz STEP ON IT You might want to get onto the fun new range of socks by Auckland label Widdess — they’re already proving so popular, they’re practically walking out the door. Named Sokken (Dutch for ‘sock’) as a nod to designer Yvonna van Hulzen’s heritage, they’re available in cotton, wool and cashmere blends in all kinds of colours intended to jazz up your outfits not just in winter…

Living Living room textiles are ideal for layering in ways that link to your lifestyle. Incorporate cushions of different sizes and shapes for any occasion — from creating a Netflix nest on the couch to meditating on the rug — and mix wool throws with lighter cotton ones kids can use for their DIY forts. Dining When building a collection of table linen that’s interchangeable for any event, let yourself be a bit playful. Classics such as the gingham and stripes we’ve used here are back, and in cohesive colours can work together to create a modern mood. Bathroom It’s such a simple touch, but even just one high-end hand towel can brighten your bathroom and your day. Have a couple on rotation so you can alter the atmosphere week…