This sweet, light-filled beach house is located in Bundeena, a seaside village on the outskirts of Sydney.
Built in about 1970s or 1980s, the brick property hides a self-contained apartment downstairs where the owners’ elderly parents live, while the upper level is used as a holiday house for the family of four.
The owner had already worked with interior designer Josie Simpson of Altus Design Studio on her permanent residence, and decided to engage her once again for a more playful refresh of their Bundeena getaway.
‘My client loves pink,’ Josie says. ‘In her main home — as she has boys and her husband and no other females in the house — we were very restrained with pink, so in the holiday house she really wanted to have more pink [tones] and softness.
‘We consciously avoided the coastal cliché of white, blues and greens.’
But this didn’t mean they had to sacrifice the essence of a classic beach house either. The structural renovations were kept to a minimum to keep the costs down, instead focusing the budget on textural materials that could bring a summery aesthetic to the dated home.
The floorplan was tweaked to extend the main bathroom and bedroom, as the ‘heavy brown slate’ in the entrance and curved staircase was replaced with a ‘lovely soft terrazzo’.
‘We needed something durable and hard wearing yet providing a sense of lightness and a big welcoming hug,’ Josie adds. ‘The entrance sets the tone for the house, and we wanted to carry that feeling throughout.’
Swapping the tiled flooring upstairs for floating light-toned floorboards and re-tiling the bathroom also helped bring a lighter feel to the interiors. Seaside-inspired details like a framed embroidery of a ship in the bedroom, rattan furniture, and patterned upholstery on the bedheads nod to the home’s peaceful location — just one street back from the beach!
‘The embroidery was originally the centre of a timber antique fireplace stand, so we removed the embroidery and had it framed,’ Josie says. ‘I love the mix of old and new.’
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