Contemporary colour

Aussie interior designer Diane Bergeron creates chic, timeless and classic spaces.  Her gorgeous Melbourne home, which appeared in none other than Australian Vogue last year, has been decorated to perfection- I love its contemporary, unique feel.  I’d be quite happy to move straight in!!

above:  efficient use of a small space can transform any area

I have a thing for orange and grey at the moment, it looks stunning together!

There’s so much ‘going on’ in each room, yet it all seems to gel together well without all being too much.  Look at the dining room (above) for example, with its stripey curtains, colourful wall montage and odd set of chairs.  Who would have thought such a mixture could look so fab?!

posted by Emily

The world made more beautiful… by Lucyina Moodie

I heard of UK interior stylist Lucyina Moodie a few days ago via Holly Becker (of fab US home decor blog Decor8). As I’d never come across her before, I thought I’d take a look at her website and OMG her work is AMAZING… and the thing that strikes me the most is that she can complete any kind of style equally successfully. Lucyina has also recently started working as an interior designer which isn’t at all surprising really – she just has the touch, doesn’t she? Here are some of the shots she’s styled…

The well- travelled look

I was quite inspired by the Gotthenburg apartment mentioned in our last post, so thought I would research the subject “small open plan apartments” and found this little treasure in the heart of Manhattan (although you wouldn’t think so…) Owned by artist Anne Becker and decorated with the help of interior designer Gregory Bissonnette, this place is the definition of a well- travelled home, with a wealth of carefully- selected and mostly mismatched objects and home accessories from around the world…

The flat actually looks much bigger than it really is, thanks to some great planning and clever finishing touches. Nothing in the apartment is actually closed off. Instead the rooms are separated by shutters, folding screens and curtain partitions, making the space and light just flow through…  The furnishings are also mostly really low, giving the area an oriental, zen like feeling on the one hand, but also contributing to making  the ceilings look higher and the space larger.

The living area is a mismatch of furniture in different styles, from different continents and even different eras (see disco ball to the left of the window!). I love the tiny hints of colour and although there are many colours at work here – I can see red, yellow, purple, beige, brown, blue, to name a few - it all works as they are muted, soft tones rather than bright shades. Note: The sofa looks scarily similar to our very own Tribeca corner sofa and the mini black tea set sitting on the Moroccan style table looks exactly like our bestselling Chinese tea set!

This is Anne’s office space apparently, doesn’t it look cosy? I would love to work in an office like this, although I can’t imagine I would get a lot of work done! Our office feels quite boring now in comparison to this – we have the dog part covered, but that’s about it really!

Not quite sure what this room is, maybe the yoga- practising/ meditating area? It does seem to be an extension of the living area, but I can’t imagine it is used a dining room? The pouffes are far too low and there’s no dining table for a start…

With the large hanging lantern, carved white painted shutters and colourful linen, this bedroom screams Morocco and it’s such a pity they haven’t gone for a chunky, gold headboard or something – it would have literally taken the bedroom up a notch – the bed just looks empty and “poor” now…

Ahaa, so this must be the dining room! It’s a great room, so calm and exotic. I absolutely love the rustic low- level table (don’t think you can find that type of furniture anymore, have to get it custom-made these days) and the curtain separators remind me of those flowing curtains that you can see hanging from pergolas in beach houses in LA.

At first glance, the kitchen seems quite boring in comparison to the rest of the flat, but actually it has some genius finishing touches, like the chunky wooden beams on the ceiling, the mismatched bar stools and the carved out area on the kitchen bar, which Anne has used to display large stones she’s brought back from her travels!

The master bathroom is a tribute to concrete, a little too rough – looking for my taste, but impressive nevertheless.

As great as open-plan living is,  it’s not usually a good idea to extend this to the bathroom… In this case though it works – the view out to the living room  makes the bathroom feel much larger, and with the help of a roller blind, you can decide whether you want to bathe while watching TV (on your living room flat screen TV and not on some tiny bathroom TV hidden in a hole that costs the earth) or if you prefer to take your shower in privacy.

All-in-all, this is a great little find and shows how much one can do with a small space… Well done Anne and thanks to Elle Decor for these fab photos. Now that Domino is gone, we’ll be using you more and more for inspiration!

Friday quiz: who is the interior designer?

Last week’s quiz turned out into quite a success, so I thought it’d be fun to make a regular feature of it every Friday! This week the task in hand is to figure out which interior designer designed which interior… so 8 homes, 8 designers to choose from: Philippe Starck, Nina Campbell, Alberto Pinto, John Stefanidis, Kerry Joyce, Candy&Candy, Kelly Hoppen and my own house!!! Good luck!

TIP: if you hover your mouse over the image, you’ll see the answers…

Answers: a) Alberto Pinto, b) Candy& Candy, c) Philippe Starcke, d) me, e) Kelly Hoppen, f) Nina Campbell g) John Stefanidis, h) Kerry Joyce