If you are reading this around the time it is published, Merry Christmas to you and I hope you’ll enjoy this blog whilst you are relaxing on holidays. We thought for fun Christmas reading, we would pull together a selection of before and after shots of our Interior Design projects in Canberra, focussing on those that we haven’t yet had professionally photographed so you won’t have already seen them in our portfolio. Of course, you can’t beat magazine-quality photography, but I trust that you will get the idea nonetheless. Done is better than perfect right?
With any luck, I hope the break gives you the chance to dream a little and plan your interior design and decoration needs for 2023, so you can start to live beautifully and enjoy the home you deserve. For myself, I am planning how to work with a gardener so I never have to face another Christmas with jobs still not done, and at least get the big gardening jobs off my plate and off my mind. To help your planning (especially if you are unsure which projects to do next year) I guarantee that if you take a little time to do our free Design & Decorating Project Planner, it will crystalise things for you – click here to grab it. I would love to hear how it went for you and what you plan for 2023.
Merry Christmas and happy Holidays
Nadine
Forrest ACT Rumpus room
Before
The Brief
The room was a barely used downstairs rumpus room. My client is working from home a lot these days but rarely ventures down here to use the office. Frankly, I am not surprised as it is practically a dungeon and far from the company of family who centres around the kitchen
The Design
Keeping the floor, adding new light fixture, a kitchenette and of course, furnishings of art and paint.
After
Now it’s a comfy hangout with a working TV, kitchenette, and a wine cellar to follow.
Canberra Surrounds – Another dungeon
Before
The Design
Our client literally called this room the dungeon, I am sensing a theme for this post right? This room is half underground hence the high windows, and you have to come down a set of stairs, literally ducking your head as you go to arrive so it really did have a dungeon vibe about it. The room’s purpose needed to double as a study (you can’t see that bit) and guest room.
I advised them to split the single beds and run them under the window as a big lounge seat. If grandkids visit the beds are ready to go, or if a couple visit, they can be rearranged to a king bed configuration. So how did we arrive at a purple and green scheme? We were focussing on green in other rooms of the home, and our client’s existing rug and artwork were heavy on purple so a green and purple scheme was born. Voila.
Note the style of fabric – the tropical theme was a nod to the original leaf curtains my clients’ mother had installed many moons ago, but we gave it fresh colours to feel less dungeon-like.
Example of fabric combo
After
Yarralumla Elevated
I almost didn’t include this project in this story, not because I am not extremely proud of this room, but because it’s been hard to do it justice in my snapshots. I think this room is definitely a candidate for professional photography, so watch this space.
Before
The Design
The starting point was that the rest of our client’s home was painted in a neutral version of mauve. Our sophisticated client needed an elevated space to enjoy with guests, or as a couple now that the grown-up kids were moving out. A TV was not a high priority for this room. The trick was balancing light furnishings with the mauve hues throughout the home. I came up with a moody chocolatey tone, incorporating my client’s wish to include a buttercup yellow. You could almost say it is a dark and white chocolate theme.
After
