Lim’s challenge was to balance the formality of the rooms with the expressive, contemporary look the owners wanted. In this, she was aided by a previous renovation, which had opened up the rear of the house with a modern, light-filled extension. “The interplay between old and new became the foundation for the new interior,” she says.
Photo: Shannon McGrath
Photo: Shannon McGrath
As there are several people living in the home (the family’s three children are young adults, so it also welcomes their friends and partners), the design needed to be practical, even though the clients loved the idea of being surrounded by art. Lim approached the project as a “living gallery” where everything, even the most sculptural designs, is “meant to be used, sat on and lived with”. Her starting point was colour. “The palette moves from calm to saturated as you travel through the home,” she explains. “In the older rooms, we used an elegant, warm grey that’s respectful of heritage proportions, quietly luxurious, and a soft base for their more formal use. In the contemporary wing, colour becomes more expressive: layered blues drawn from the indigo kitchen joinery, deepened by velvet furnishings and punctuated with accents of pink, burgundy and bronze.”
