My client Samantha Everton is a photographic artist. Her work is colourful, surrealist and dramatic, but always full of fun. So when she asked me to design her Brunswick home, I had a feeling we were going to have fun working together. The brief followed her art: colour, pattern and surprises, with animals aplenty.
A period family home with a new extension, for a busy family with children. It needed to hold all of Samantha’s personality (and her art collection) without losing practicality.
A bold yellow front door with a bee knocker is the first sign of what’s coming. In the hallway, Samantha’s two hand painted wallpapers, used as backdrops in her artwork, finally found their home: a blue and white chinoiserie opposite the master bedroom, and a green and pink floral outside the matching mud room. You can’t take either design in properly until you’re in the room facing it, which is exactly the point. Overhead, a handmade pendant with a dip dyed fringe.
The bedroom is sophisticated but dramatic: a bench seat built into the bay window, a rattan bedhead, burnished gold pendants. The small ensuite had to work hard without taking itself too seriously. You enter through a black, moody walk through wardrobe in Florence Broadhurst wallpaper. Inside, salmon pink paint and an irregular polka dot wallpaper undercut the seriousness of the black and white floor tiles, while the custom made vanity stays light and airy to keep the room feeling spacious.
The bathroom had to be fun, happy and super practical. The custom made animal mural, in black and white, balances the teal wall rather than competing with it. The floor tiles were custom made in Morocco, in red, black and white.
The powder room is where I let loose. Powder rooms are the one completely standalone room in a house, so they should be as colourful and crazy as possible. Zebra wallpaper from the US covers two walls, a fine black and white stripe the other two, with orange tiles and geometric black and white floors grounding the busyness.
Storage was front of mind, so the laundry doubles as a mud room off the side door. Bags and jackets never make it further into the home. Green and pink is the antidote to the grey wall and cabinetry.
The new part of the home needed period elements to tie it back to the original, so the stained glass in the kitchen and dining area nods to the originals, just more modern. The kitchen is sophisticated and serious, so the animal filled pink wallpaper lightens the mood. In the living room, charcoal walls turn the main wall into a gallery for Samantha’s collection.
My favourite room. The olde world mural sets the scene, softened by hand painted purple stripes at either end. Floor to ceiling bookshelves face it.
This home works the way Samantha’s art does. Bold, playful and full of animals, but every pattern has a job to do.
