Tag: interior designer

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Designers House Tours

The 5 stunning homes shortlisted in the Belle Coco Republic Interior Design Awards 2014

Call it a first world problem, but I’m devastated to be missing this year’s Belle Coco Republic Interior Design Awards (on account of being in Europe) as it’s always such a great event and celebration. My excitement always starts on receiving the year’s finalists and I’m delighted to share with you sideshows of five homes shortlisted in the residential category. I must disclose my own personal bias towards my friend Greg Natale (whose forthcoming book I was lucky enough to work on with him). He has not one but two houses in this category! My favourite is the Croydon House.

Clearly each one of these homes is exceptional though. Enjoy the house porn!

The East Brisbane House by Greg Natale Design

The Croydon House by Greg Natale Design

The Avenue by Arent & Pyke

Arthouse by Sarah Davison Interior Design

Flinders House by Susi Leeton

The Belle Coco Republic Interior Design Awards, now in their fourth year, acknowledge excellence in Australian interior design and decoration and celebrate the best of the best in this ever-progressive industry. Awards are given in categories spanning the residential, commercial, corporate and hospitality sectors.

This year’s judging panel includes Coco Republic executive director Anthony Spon-Smith, Belle editor-in-chief Neale Whitaker and interior designer and blogger Dana Tomic-Hughes. The awards’ international judge is celebrated New York-based designer and retailer Jonathan Adler. Impressive stuff!

In the ultimate Belle Coco Republic Interior Designer of the Year category, finalists have been selected based upon careful consideration of the overall body of work submitted. The finalists for the big prize are:

I must say it’s fantastic to see so many women represented this year.

The announcement of all the award finalists, accompanied by images of their work, will be revealed in Belle’s new May issue, which goes on sale today (Monday 7 April).

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Belle Editor-in-chief Neale Whitaker said: “The quality of work in this year’s awards is exceptional. It’s the most exciting year yet. Every year it seems Australian interior designers are getting more innovative, more creative and more willing to push the envelope.”

The winners will be announced on 14 May at a champagne reception held at Coco Republic’s Sydney showroom. The winner of the Belle Coco Republic Interior Designer of the Year will receive two return flights to Maison et Objet, Paris, plus Parisi bathroom products to the value of $6000 and a $3000 Cadrys rug voucher. Prize packages in all categories include a $1,000 Coco Republic voucher, a $1,000 Cadrys rug voucher and a $1,000 Parisi voucher.

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Competitions

Win dinner for 2 to celebrate the new look Victoria Room

The Victoria Room has a new look and it’s not surprising it’s a stunning one, thanks to the work of interior designer Blainey North.

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After 10 successful years of trading, the new owners decided it was time for a change. Blainey has given the venue a beautiful new look featuring lots of dark navy (my favourite!) and deep, masculine shades, whilst moving away from the previous British Raj style.

Chef Samuel Cheetham, previously of Chez Bruce in London and Becasse & Quarter Twenty One in Sydney, is now heading up the kitchen. His new menu includes delicious sounding dishes like freshly shucked oysters with Campari granita, salt baked potatoes with smoked sour cream, shallots & preserved lemon, marinated Mahi Mahi and scallop, lime, black pepper and avocado (pictured).

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WIN

To celebrate the new look, one lucky reader will win a three-course dinner for two with a glass of wine each at the Victoria Room. To enter, complete this form by 11pm on Wednesday 5 March 2014.

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Designers Interviews

Young Designer: Khoa Nguyen of Design Poets

Our Young Designer series aims to inspire those who are yet to get their first foot on the ladder in this fiercely competitive industry.

At 27, and with a couple of jobs under his belt, Khoa Nguyen now works for himself at Brisbane-based Design Poets. He also teaches wannabe designers at Queensland College of Art (QCA).

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While he learned a lot from working for other people, the self-confessed design nerd and young father just had to give being his own boss a go. So far, it hasn’t been as hard as he imagined.

So, when did he know you wanted to be an interior designer? “I was doing my building course and next to us were some students studying interior design. I popped my head in to see what they were learning about it and it appealed to me so much more than cyclone ratings for timber framing. That was the day.”

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Styling The Block

Photos: Friday night’s Sydney 7 vignettes event

We had another wonderful reader event with The Block’s Darren Palmer in Sydney on Friday, at BoConcept in Crows Nest.

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Double act: Darren Palmer and I
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It was great to have such a big crowd
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We pride ourselves on a good spread at our events!

A crowd of more than 100 people came along to listen to me interviewing Darren and sharing his insider take on The Block as well as insight on how he got to be where he is today, tips on decor and getting into the interiors industry. He was a popular guest of honour with plenty of people queuing up to have their photo taken with him and ask him questions.

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Interviewing Darren for his fans

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Later in the evening, the crowd were let loose on the BoConcept showroom to move anything they liked and create their own vignettes, uploading them to Instagram for the chance to win a fabulous BoConcept stool worth almost $500. The lucky winner was Tessa White.

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It was great to meet so many readers in person

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Darren delighted our guests, having lots of chats and photos with them
Our youngest guest, Annabel with her mum, Emma
Our youngest guest, Annabel with her mum, Emma

Guests mingled and met each other, having got to know each other first through the monthly 7 Vignettes challenge on Instagram. I loved meeting so many of you. It is always a pleasure and I swear I have the nicest (and most creative) blog readers in Australia!

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Setting up vignettes
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Tom Ryan arranges his vignette. Yes, men come to our events too!
Emma Blomfield snapping her vignette for Instagram
Emma Blomfield snapping her vignette for Instagram

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More happy guests
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Guest of honour Darren Palmer and I

Delicious food was provided by The Wooden Whisk and drinks by First Creek Wines and Santa Vittoria water.

A huge thank you to Darren and our event partner BoConcept. There’ll be more events in Sydney and interstate before the end of 2014, but first my 6-month overseas trip!

Thanks also to our gift bag sponsors: Byron Bay Cookies, Temple & Webster, Taubmans, The Wooden Whisk, Ultraceuticals, Babe Scrub, BoConcept and Silk Home Staging & Styling.

ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY JACQUI TURK

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Interiors Addict’s editorial assistant, Olivia Shead
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Previous 7 Vignettes winner Galina Dixon
Guests enjoyed wines from First Creek
Guests enjoyed wines from First Creek
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Guests took home packed gift bags
 
Categories
Interiors Addict

Young Designer: Connie Condylios, Greg Natale Design

Our Young Designer series aims to inspire those who are yet to get their first foot on the ladder in this fiercely competitive industry.

Many graduates would give their right arm to be where 25 year-old Connie Condylios is. The interior designer at Greg Natale Design impressed her well known boss with her initiative and good work ethic.

Connie Condylios Portrait

She completed her Advanced Diploma in Interior Design at the respected Design Centre, Enmore, where Greg also studied before her, and worked for interior designer Thomas Bucich throughout her studies.

She explained how showing initiative and not being afraid to ask, got her where she is today.

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Interiors Addict

It’s never too late to start your dream job. And I should know!

Sponsored by Nuffnang

I’m grateful for many things in life (great husband, supportive friends, healthy family) but the thing that makes me pinch myself on a regular basis is doing what I really, truly love, and that is writing this blog. For me, this is not just a hobby but a full-time job, my small business, my hopes and dreams for the future and hopefully something I can one day work around having a family.

Until you do what you love, you don’t realise how unfulfilled you were in your previous jobs or what a rare privilege it is to be in such a position. So often, people tell me they’d love to be doing something else but for whatever reason (age, family commitments, mortgage, what other people would think or the feeling of obligation to look after other people first) they think they’ve left it too late. I have become quite evangelical about telling people it’s never too late.

Continue reading “It’s never too late to start your dream job. And I should know!”

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Designers House Tours

Period Melbourne home belonging to interior decorator and Home & Away star’s mother

This beautiful period property, bought as the worst house on the best street in Melbourne’s Hawthorn, belongs to interior decorator Charis James, mother of former Home & Away actress Tessa James.

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Charis says designing for yourself, rather than clients, is very different

As a design professional, tackling a serious renovation project which would also become her family’s home and living on site the whole time, was challenging to say the least. “Designing for yourself is very different,” Charis says. “A lot of the designing takes place in your head a long time before the construction begins. As a designer it gives you total control and flexibility to lead with your instincts and change your mind and make decisions on the spot. Prioritising things with the spaces that you know will make all the difference to the final product and not having to convince someone else to spend extra money, means your design isn’t compromised.”

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Designers Expert Tips Interviews

Young Designer: Lauren Rugless of CHADA

Lauren Rugless

Our Young Designer series aims to inspire those who are yet to get their first foot on the ladder in this fiercely competitive industry.

Internships and determination are what landed Lauren Rugless her first junior designer job at CHADA — a leading hospitality design practice in Sydney — before she’d even graduated!

Lauren Rugless
Lauren Rugless

The 22 year-old was employed full-time last year, before completing her degree in Design at the prestigious COFA (majoring in spatial and textile design).

Proving you’re keen and committed is paramount, she advises:

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Designers Interviews

Young Designer: Brendan Guy of Thomas Hamel & Associates

In the first of our new Young Designer series, aimed at inspiring those who are yet to get their first foot on the ladder in this fiercely competitive industry, I spoke to Brendan Guy, design assistant at the esteemed Thomas Hamel & Associates in Sydney.

Brendan Guy Thomas Hamel & Associates
Brendan Guy

As mentors go, Thomas Hamel, with his many years of experience, popular book and beautiful international body of work, is hard to beat. Which is why Brendan, 27, feels extremely lucky to have started his design career with his studio.

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Designers

Exclusive: Sydney interior designer Greg Natale is working on his first book

Greg Natale

I’m very excited to share with you that Sydney interior designer Greg Natale has a publishing contract for his first book, due out at the end of this year. I’m probably even more excited to share that I’m helping him write it.

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The book, which I can’t reveal the name of, will of course be of the beautiful coffee table variety. Almost all the work featured in it has never been published or seen before and I feel extremely privileged to have had a preview of some of the most stunning homes. Call me biased, but Mr Natale has taken things up a level and then some! And I already thought the work I’d seen before was amazing. Just you wait! I’m telling you, all your Christmas gifts are taken care of this year!

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House Tours

Family’s Happy New Year after winning kitchen makeover from IKEA

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A Sydney family found entertaining a lot easier this Christmas thanks to winning a kitchen/diner overhaul from IKEA.

The Kalamaras family, from East Lakes, really wanted a space that better suited their growing young family but just couldn’t afford to do renovate just yet. Space was limited and that space was definitely not being used to its full potential.

Watch their story on this video

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Interiors Addict

Darren Palmer’s flooring range for Carpet Court

After dishing out style and design advice as a judge on The Block All Stars and The Block Sky High last year, Darren Palmer has collaborated with Carpet Court to create his own affordable designer flooring range, Provincial Lane.

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In a first for the interior designer, his product range will include durable and hard-wearing laminate, a European vinyl plank and bamboo hard flooring, as well as luxurious 100% wool carpet from Cavalier Bremworth and the latest generation solution dyed nylon.

Darren believes the range is both on trend, affordable and retains the beauty of natural elements. “I’ve always been fascinated with the power and beauty of nature so I love to find ways to bring nature’s colours and textures indoors,” he said.

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Interiors Addict

Chance for 3 up and coming designers to win $2,000 study grant from IKEA Rhodes

TAFE students on work placement at IKEA Rhodes

Up-and-coming local designers have the chance to win a $2,000 grant to help them gain professional qualifications next year, thanks to IKEA Rhodes and TAFE NSW – South Western Sydney Institute (SWSi).

TAFE students on work placement at IKEA Rhodes
TAFE students on work placement at IKEA Rhodes

To be in with a chance, they must demonstrate their creativity by redesigning a corner of their own home using images of IKEA’s products from its iconic catalogue. Entries will be published on the Lidcombe Xposed Facebook Page where members of the public will be encouraged to show their support by ‘liking’ their favourite design.

The top 5 entries with the most Facebook likes will then be printed and displayed at the Rhodes store between Monday 30 December 2013 and Friday 10 January 2014, where customers will get the final say.

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Interiors Addict

Pinterest meets online directory with new Oneflare Scrapbooks

Sponsored by Oneflare 

Imagine your Pinterest ‘dream home’ board combined with an online directory of qualified professionals to make that dream a reality. No need to: Oneflare Scrapbooks exists!

oneflare scrapbooks

If you’re looking to build your dream home, or to renovate, a new, Australian-first design tool could help. Oneflare Scrapbooks helps you find and collect inspiring photos of your favourite home designs and ideas, then find the right people to do the work for you, all on one website. Clever, huh?

It’s essentially like a Pinterest for home design, but powered by almost 40,000 qualified Australian home service businesses (like interior designers and builders), all guaranteed by Oneflare. And just like finding a local service on Oneflare, it’s simple to use, and totally free.

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Interiors Addict

Postcard from Perth: a guide to homewares shopping in WA

By Kim Pearson

Over here in the wild wild west, we WAussies are known for our enthusiasm for doing things our way. And so it is with our music, fashion, art, design … and shopping. Over the past few years, a growing band of independent creatives and lovers of beauty and innovation have established some seriously good little — and big — shops as purveyors of the unique, bespoke, handmade and directional in all things interiors. Yeeehah!

Here are a few of my local favourites (shhh don’t tell anyone)…

MOBILIA

1/248 Stirling Highway, Claremont, 6010, Perth, Western Australia www.mobilia.com.au t: 08 9284 5599

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Established 3 years ago by brothers Salvatore and Michael and Sam’s beautiful partner Mirella, MOBILIA follows the fine Fazzari family tradition of furniture design and craftsmanship by introducing to Australia some of Europe’s finest directional furniture from principally Spanish design studios. Along with major players Kettal, Ziru and Nani Marquina, Sam has brought to our shores stunningly unique pieces of Yonoh, Punt Mobles, Kendo, Joquer and Omelette-ED amongst others. From sofas to sideboards, clocks to fruit bowls that grow (I kid you not), Mobilia passionately showcases a genuinely exciting and constantly evolving collection of gobsmackingly good things for your home.

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Expert Tips Styling

How to create your own Wabi Sabi interior

By Jodie Carter

If you haven’t heard of Wabi Sabi before, in simple terms it is translated from Japanese into ‘a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete… a beauty of things modest and humble… a beauty of things unconventional”. Originally, the words Wabi Sabi were not used together as they do have quite different meanings. Wabi has come to mean simple, unmaterialistic, humble and in tune with nature. Whereas Sabi means ‘The bloom of time’ such as that beautiful patina of weathered grey wood or aged copper. Nowadays people just use them as one and the term is quite well known around the world.

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Image from homelife.com.au: Cherry Cottage in Tasmania – Photography by Jared Fowler 
 

I truly believe this is a valid concept for our times. As we become more aware of the environment and sustainability of our planet, then Wabi Sabi becomes even more important. Not only is it better for our planet to embrace some of our existing pieces but it is quite on trend in interiors today. You will find well known designers and stylists such as Sibella Court successfully using aged items in their designs to great effect.

Wabi Sabi is not actually a design style as such – but rather a mindset of a commitment to using and embracing the less than perfect. Living modestly and learning to be happy with what you have.

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Image from homelife.com.au: Wentworth Falls Cottage – photography by Sharyn Cairns

Therefore it doesn’t really matter if you’re looking to create an industrial feel, a loft style apartment or a Hamptons retreat, the Wabi Sabi mindset is an additional tool that is not only good for the environment, its good for your soul and your back pocket.

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Interiors Addict

Top 10 feature wall ideas

By Kristie Castagna

There has been some debate lately about the use of ‘feature walls’ and if we should be considering treating the entire room to the feature and not just one lonely wall. A bit of a designer “go hard or go home” type attitude or what I like to call full design commitment.

Personally, as a designer I have always used features as a way of giving clients a little bit of a gentle shove into those design ideas they never thought they would have previously considered. So I am not sure I could let go of the single feature wall for my clients’ sake, as many of them, like many of you, are still to dip their toes in the wallpaper, bright colour or alternative wall covering type options.

With all that being said, I thought I would bring to you my top 10 favorite feature wall ideas:

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Interiors Addict

Designing in the tropics: the divine Darwin

By Verity Coonan

When people think of Darwin it’s often red dirt and crocs and some backwards living – some people (admit it) might not have even heard of the place. However in recent years Darwin is coming into its own, with a bustling city, waterfront precinct and youth bursting with fresh ideas and eyes for new opportunities. Darwin is no longer the ‘city up north’ but one to show itself on the map as a landmark city with a style of its own.

The design culture in Darwin is as diverse as its people. Our conditions are harsh (they don’t call it going troppo for nothing) and because of recent events the budget strings pull especially tight. But seeing these elements as a benefit, even an inspiration, is what drives the eclectic style I like to call ‘Darwinian’.

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