Before this house was a ’60s-inspired contemporary delight, it was a ‘safe’ suburban residence with white walls, beige carpet and uninspiring finishes. Boy, has that changed!
‘It needed some love,’ admits interior designer Nicholas Kaiko of Kaiko Design. ‘The rooms were generous and the layout, whilst it didn’t exactly suit the clients in its original configuration, gave enough scope to reconfigure to their needs. It had loads of potential.’
Working within the original footprint of the house, Nicholas redesigned the internal spaces, transforming the second living room into a child’s bedroom and adding a powder room. A bedroom was turned into a ‘media snug’, the laundry into a butler’s pantry, the workshop into a laundry and merged the main bathroom and adjacent toilet into one family-sized bathroom.
Once the layout had been adjusted, the designers added a decorative layer over the top to tie the whole scheme together. Interesting finishes and contrasting colours create a glamorous, confident palette, which is centred around the client’s love for red travertine.
‘Variations of this brave material are used throughout,’ Nicholas explains. ‘A piece of terracotta glass at the entry, the terracotta polished plaster in the kitchen, coloured grout, accessories in the media snug, rich tan leather dining chairs, and the textured and flat terracotta paints in the living room.’
The broader colour palette works in tandem with these bold materials – offering either lightness or deep saturation in perfect balance. For instance, Laminex Avignon Walnut in ‘Chalk’ finish in the kitchen and main ensuite is offset by black tapware and surface tops, whilst Laminex Alaskan in ‘Nuance’ finish in the butler’s pantry neatly balances the adjacent deep blue kitchen cupboards.
When considering shape, Nicholas took inspiration from the home’s original archways, using a spherical motif throughout his design. Rounded furniture and curved elements add a softness to this bold, personality-filled home!
See more projects from Kaiko Design here.
