Things We Remember
Some homes are designed around a style. This time, it’s designed around memories.
For the owners, home has always been closely tied to family. Some of their fondest memories came from the time spent with their grandparents. They remembered the familiar colours, the timber, the old tiles and the warm, slightly imperfect character of the homes they grew up around. These were not things they would necessarily have noticed as children. They were simply part of being there.
Years later, those ordinary details had become memories.
When it came time to create a home for their own family, they wanted to bring some of that feeling back. Not by recreating their grandparents' home, but by taking the little things that stayed with them and giving them a new life.
That became the starting point for the design.
The home takes on a Modern Eclectic character because the owners themselves are a collection of different memories, experiences and influences. Nothing is overly matched. Instead, timber sits alongside tile, old familiar details sit beside contemporary forms, and warm earthy colours are balanced with the cooler blue chosen by their children.
"There are things you remember without really knowing why you remember them," the designer reflects. "Sometimes it is just a colour, a material or the feeling of being in a certain room."
Things We Carry
The warm brown tiles are one of those details. Used in the bathrooms and utility area, their earthy tone recalls the homes the owners knew growing up. There is something deliberately humble about them. They are not precious or showy. They feel like the kind of material that could have been there for years, subtly becoming part of everyday life.
The same warmth continues through the ground floor. Timber, deep brown tones and warm lighting give the kitchen and living spaces a sense of intimacy. The arched opening and timber staircase add another layer of familiarity, recalling an older kind of domestic architecture without turning the home into a recreation of the past.
We wanted the home to feel as though it had a history, even though it was newly made.
The upper floor is more personal still. The three bedrooms are connected by an intermediate space created by opening up part of one bedroom.
The hallway sink becomes part of this shared space. The bedroom doors are fitted with wired glass, allowing daylight to filter through while introducing another material with a sense of the past. For the owners, it recalled the kind of glass they had encountered in their childhood, when they were students, a fond memory which they hope will be passed down to their children.
These details are small, but that is precisely why they matter.
A home is rarely remembered as a collection of grand gestures. We remember sitting somewhere with our grandparents. We remember the colour of a wall. We remember the light coming through a door. We remember the tiles in a bathroom, even if we could never have explained why.
In that sense, the home becomes a bridge between generations.
Things We Leave Behind
The designer's role was simply to bring those pieces together. To take memories that existed only in fragments and give them somewhere to live.
The result is a home that feels lived in even before it has had the chance to age.
A place where the parents can recognise fragments of the homes they grew up in, while their children begin creating memories that will one day become their own.
And perhaps years from now, they will not remember the name of the design style.
They will remember the brown tiles.
The warmth of the timber.
The glow of the kitchen at night.
The blue bathroom that belonged to them.
The old fashioned glass in the bedroom doors.
Maybe they will remember being upstairs together, washing their hands at the hallway sink, running from one bedroom to another.
And perhaps that is the real measure of a home.
Not how perfectly it was designed, but how much of a life it manages to hold.
