How To Create A Home Full Of Personality, According To An Interior Designer

There’s an art to making a home feel fun, yet liveable; sophisticated yet unpretentious.

Striking this delicate balance is something that’s at the heart of every Altus Design Studio project. Founded by Josie Simpson, the Sydney design practice has a penchant for instilling clients’ homes with character, in a way that feels elevated and authentic.

‘I’m drawn to interiors that have personality and a sense of confidence, but that still feel welcoming, comfortable and liveable. I never want a home to feel like a showpiece, or somewhere that is too stiff or formal to actually use. A house is there to be lived in, not admired from afar,’ Josie says.

This approach is captured especially well in two of the studio’s recently completed projects: Karinya House, a soulful family home on Sydney’s North Shore and Ivy League, a beautifully reworked 1910 Federation home where playful furniture from DOMO gives the heritage home a contemporary edge.

We spoke to Josie about how these houses came to life, and her advice on how to style your own home with statement pieces.

Hi Josie! Altus Design Studio is known for creating expressive, colourful, and character-filled residential spaces. How would you describe your design approach?

We want the homes we design to feel individual to the people who live in them, rather than adhering to a particular look or formula. Colour is obviously a big part of our work, but so is spatial planning, materiality, art and the way different pieces are layered together.

Something we hear increasingly from clients is that they want their homes to make them feel happy and calm. We tend to mix colour, pattern and natural materials with contemporary furniture, art and pieces our clients already own and love. Those existing pieces bring history and personality to a home and stop it from feeling as though everything has been selected and installed at once.

Your projects strike a perfect balance between playfulness and sophistication. What’s your advice for getting that balance right?

I think the key is knowing where to have fun and where to exercise restraint. Not every element needs to be the hero.

We might use an unexpected colour combination, a playful piece of furniture or a bold artwork, but balance that with beautiful natural materials, strong forms and quieter elements. Quality is also important. A bold colour or unusual shape can still feel incredibly sophisticated when the material, craftsmanship and proportions are right.

I also think interiors become more interesting when things aren’t too perfect. Introducing something unexpected, whether that’s colour, pattern, art or a slightly eccentric piece of furniture, gives the room personality.

For the interior decoration and styling in your Karinya House project, you brought together a distinctive edit of furniture, including bold statement chairs like the HC28 Cosmo Bonbon Dining Chair and the Ligne Roset Pumpkin Armchair. How can people use sculptural furniture pieces like this in a room?

A sculptural piece of furniture can perform a similar role to an artwork. It gives your eye somewhere to land and can bring shape, colour and personality into a space.

Ligne Roset’s iconic Pumpkin Armchair is one of my favourites because it is both incredibly good-looking and genuinely comfortable. It has such a distinctive form, but it’s soft and curvaceous, so it doesn’t feel jarring against the other furniture in the room. I also love that it swivels. You can turn towards the rest of the room and be part of the conversation, or swivel around towards the fire and snuggle into the Pumpkin to read a book with the kids.

For me, that’s what a great statement piece should do. It can be sculptural and memorable, but it still needs to work beautifully for the way people actually live.

Another distinctive feature of your styling for Karinya House is that the furniture has clearly been curated to complement one another, but they are not ‘matching’ in the traditional sense. Why did you embrace this look for this space?

I rarely want furniture to feel like it has been bought as a suite. For me, the interest comes from the conversation between different pieces.

At Karinya House, we were working with a large open-plan kitchen, dining and living space, so the furniture needed to relate to one another without everything being repeated. There are common threads through colour, material, proportion and form, but the pieces have their own identities.

That creates a much more layered and relaxed interior. It feels as though the pieces have been collected over time because they are individually loved, rather than selected simply because they match. I think that gives a home longevity too. You can continue to add to it over time without feeling bound by a particular set or style.

What drew you to feature pieces like the HC28 Cosmo YAYA Armchair in the living room for your Ivy League project? 

I was immediately drawn to the shape of the YAYA Armchair. It almost acts as a piece of sculpture within the living room, while still being a very functional and comfortable piece of furniture.

The colour was also very deliberate. I loved it as an unexpected contrast against the fireplace and vintage rug. Rather than trying to match the colours already in the room, it adds another layer and gives the space a little tension, which I think makes an interior much more interesting. Ivy League already has plenty of character, colour and detail, so the chair didn’t need to shout for attention.

More generally, what do you look for when selecting furniture and design pieces for your projects?

We’re always looking for pieces with personality. That might be an interesting silhouette, a beautiful material, an unexpected colour or simply really good proportions.

We also think about what a piece contributes to the room beyond its basic function. Does it introduce a curve where there are lots of straight lines? Does it bring warmth or texture? Does it create contrast? Does it connect with an artwork or another colour elsewhere in the room?

Quality and longevity are also really important to us. We don’t want every piece to demand attention, but there should be a reason for each piece being there. The best interiors mix quieter supporting pieces with those more distinctive pieces that you remember, all chosen with the intention that they’ll stay in the home for a long time.

Looking to bring more colour and personality into your own home? DOMO is Australia’s leading design destination for some of the world’s most iconic designer furniture, lighting and homewares brands, carefully curated from Europe and across the globe.

Visit DOMO’s showrooms in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, or explore the collections online to find something that feels uniquely yours.