Design Insights (Blog)

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...

Every so often a project comes along that reminds me why I love this work. Not because the house needed saving, and not because the transformation was dramatic. This facade makeover is the opposite of dramatic, and that's exactly the point. When the owners of this two...

Standing seam may be having a well-deserved moment in façade design, but its value goes well beyond being on-trend. Used thoughtfully, its strong vertical lines can change the way you perceive a home’s proportions—particularly when the house is long, elevated or...

When homeowners start researching home facade renovation before and after inspiration, what they usually discover is plenty of colour schemes, material ideas, and beautiful finished homes. What they don't always see is the thinking behind the transformation. This...

As a facade design expert, I could immediately see the potential in this architecturally designed home - it just wasn’t being realised. While the structure itself had been well considered, the materials hadn’t stood the test of time. Finishes were beginning to look...