Decorating a home isn’t about creating picture-perfect scenes – it’s about styling spaces in which you can really live with things you love. While producing this issue, a theme emerged around the topic of materials. From lovingly restored timber flooring and a schist path that inches over a doorstep, to bright-yellow steel cladding and polished marble vanities, the homes we’ve profiled all feature materials that imbue them with an ambience that suits their owners’ lifestyles.
The residents of our Auckland cover home on page 62, landscape designers Sandii McDonald and Jared Reynolds, completely transformed a drab unit with a luxuriously earthy palette of black plywood, knotted-oak flooring and textural soft furnishings – as well as plenty of the plants they love. For fellow Aucklanders Alexandra Cunningham and Sam Brodie (page 76), it was about ditching a green ’90s scheme in favour of a versatile backdrop of white and wood against which to display their extensive collection of art, photographs and furniture.
In Christchurch, Jen and Keeley Pomeroy (page 88) could see the flaws in their first home. But that didn’t stop them making good when they renovated with a focus on quality finishes that would stand up to the demands of a young family and see them through the years.
Further afield, Finnish couple Annaleena and Tuomas Hämäläinen left inner-city Helsinki in search of serenity, and found a home (page 100) that ticked every one of their boxes. The mid-century red-brick row house they fell for and sensitively updated would not be out of place in New Zealand, and I couldn’t help but draw a parallel when I visited Mahsa Willis’s modernist West Auckland home (page 54), which is set amid dense bush and inspires her work as a fashion designer.
Every one of the beautiful properties in this issue are in sync with the families who live in them. We hope they inspire you to decorate your home as a backdrop to your best life.
Alice Lines, Editor
@alice.lines
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