Design Insights (Blog)

By the time most people building a new home get to the exterior, they’re pretty much running on fumes. The floor plan has been through countless revisions, the kitchen has been debated for weeks, and the façade gets whatever energy is left. I’ve spent 30 years in the...

Over the past decade, white and grey became the go-to palette for Australian homes. Crisp white render, charcoal trims, a grey roof. It was clean and safe, and for a while it felt very current. Lately, though, I'm hearing the same thing from homeowners again and...

Pinterest is a brilliant place to start when you’re planning a renovation or new build. The problem usually isn’t finding inspiration. It’s working out what to do with all of it. You might have saved a contemporary home with dark cladding, another with beautiful...

Most people who come to me about outdoor living design arrive with three decisions already half made. The colour of the walls. The paving. The colour of the pool. That's the mental list, and it feels like a reasonable one, because those are the three things you can...

When people think about renovating a home so they can stay in it longer, they almost always start inside. Grab rails in the bathroom, wider doorways, non-slip flooring in the kitchen etc. All sensible and all necessary! But I've noticed something over years of working...

If you're building or renovating a large home on a large block, there’s something you need to consider that you might not have thought about. One of the mistakes I see with larger homes is choosing elements that might look perfectly appropriate on a typical suburban...

Rendering brick is one of the fastest ways to take a tired, dated home and give it real street presence. It's also one of the easiest ways to end up with a result that looks like every second house on the street. The difference comes down to the decisions made before...

Nine times out of ten these days, clients arrive at their first meeting with me armed with a selection of A.I-generated images. I welcome it. Bringing these to our first conversation is one of the most useful things a client can do before we sit down together. Using...

Not every element of my client's renovations is up for discussion. Sometimes a homeowner has windows (or a roof, wall cladding etc) in perfectly good condition that simply aren't in the budget or the plan to replace, and the whole facade design needs to work around...

I get asked some version of the same question almost every week. Someone sends me a photo of their house, usually looking a bit sheepish about it, and asks whether it's actually possible to make it look like a different place. Not just tidied up. Different. This...