Design Insights (Blog)

“How much should we spend on the outside?” It’s one of the questions I’m asked most often. Most homeowners have no real sense of what to allow, which is completely understandable. Exterior upgrade costs for a renovation or a new build isn’t something you can look up...

A lot of conversations with homeowners start with a material. Someone has fallen for a particular stone, a cladding profile or a beautiful timber door, and they want to know where it should go. It’s a good instinct, and materials matter. But on this canal-front home...

I'm going to make a call that may not be popular. Of all the exterior design trends I've watched arrive over the past few years, there are three I believe will date homes much faster than people expect. I've been designing façades for a long time - long enough to see...

This beachside home in Curl Curl, NSW was one of those houses that wore their decade like a name badge, but its 90s house facade makeover is a good example of how much can change without touching the roofline. Three storeys of orange face brick, ornate metal...

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...