THE BIG, CENTRAL DESIGN Decisions

Building, planning and designing our own home has not been a simple task. With the hundreds of decisions we have had to make, we thought you might be interested in some of the big decisions that have really guided our project, and how we made them.

SETTING THE SCENE

Start with creating your moodboards and colour palettes as the first step to designing. We believe moodboards should be the first thing you do to create consistency in your aesthetics and decision making.

Check out our blogpost on how we put together our moodboards here

After firming up the colour palette and overall look and feel for the house, I find it is important to follow a certain order with your decision making.

KEY DESIGN FEATURES

First choose what your key design elements are within the house.

Inspired by the wonderful rock and clay cliffs at our local beach, and also our love for original 70s house design that used a lot of stone work, we decided that a very textured and rough cut stone would be a prominent part of our design for both exterior and interior.

We have chosen to have a split face Travertine wall that carries from the outside of the house and extends right through the length of the house on the base level. This wall is going to be a major feature, and has become my starting point to help determine colour palettes and other material selections within the home.

This is what the Splitface Travertine Wall should look like when its done:

We then worked away on the rest of the key interior decisions, now that we have our key design element, the Travertine Stone, we can now match the rest of our decisions back to our stone work and colour palettes we’ve created.

- Flooring

- Wall Paint colours

- Tiling

- Accessories

Flooring

The floors being one of the largest areas to cover, the flooring product was our next pressing design decision.

We teamed up with Vidaspace who helped us select the best hardwood for our space. We quickly realised that the best flooring for the house and our family was an Engineered Timber flooring rather than solid timber.

Engineered timber is a harder wearing option, and won’t mark, shrink or warp like solid timber does especially in New Zealand humid climates.

We have chosen a warm oak flooring called ‘Allevard Pureplank’

For the bedrooms, we went backwards and forwards for a while on whether we continue on with hardwood flooring, or do we have a soft and luxurious carpet? After much discussion, we decided that bedrooms are the most comfortable when you have cosy carpet underfoot. So we have a lovely Cavalier Bremworth luxurious loose pile carpet called Galet.

Wall Paint colour

Now we have two very big areas covered, (the flooring and large stone wall feature), I now move on to paint colours to create a solid foundation for the rest of our design decisions.

As our home is nestled in the tree tops, we are surrounded by some beautiful scenery and we want our view to be a hero of the house. So when it comes to the paint colours I think it is important to keep it light and neutral for the main walls and ceiling. I also feel that this being our familly forever home, neutrals in the main space is timeless and allows me to use colour as features and highlights in other ways.

So how to choose the right whites or neutrals is the next hot topic. It can be pretty overwhelming when you see how many different options there are to choose from. I’ve written a separate blog post on this exact topic, as it’s a question I often get asked.

See our blog post ‘Which White is right?’

TILING

Not many people know this, but I am secretly obsessed with tiles!

I collect them, I search high and low for new styles and designs, I have numerous pinterest boards dedicated to tiles, and ever since we knew this house was to be built, I started searching for my ultimate tile.

I think Tiles can be one of the main design features within a home, especially in Kitchens (the hub of a home) so are therefore a very serious decision. So before getting into designing bathrooms and kitchens, I always think it’s important to have your tiles decided on first, rather than it being an after thought.

I sadly feel that New Zealand has a very dated range of tiles across the main retailers and I have truly struggled to find my ultimate tiles for this house. I have always wanted to make a statement with some wild patterned tiles in our bathrooms or kitchen, so I have found just over the ditch in Australia some amazing retailers with wide ranges of tiles that I just needed!!! We just had to fork out a hefty sum to freight them over, so we have kept the tiled areas to a minimum.

We will reveal our tile decisions very soon!

ACCESSORIES

Now all the nitty gritty design decisions can be made.

These are the accessories of the home that may seem small, but if not thought about properly can really make a home feel disjointed and unplanned. I’m talking about this grand list of things that you might not even realise have a lot of thought put into them:

- Cabinetry Colours

- Benchtop materials

- Tapware colours

- Bathroom ware

- Plaster finishes

- Scotia and Skirting finishes

- Vanities

- Main area lighting

- Feature lighting

- Staircase

- Window Joinery colours

- Switch gear

- Door handles

- Interior door colours and surfaces

- Fireplace joinery

This is a pretty hefty list, but don’t underestimate how important each decision is, and how valuable it is to really plan these and link them back to your moodboards and chosen colour palettes to make the house look amazing!

Now I have these key interior decisions made, we can start pulling our rooms together!