In The Pink

The pretty pastel colour palette and floral wallpapers of this grand Federation house evoke English style in a very Australian way.

- Chris Pearson

This room is evocative of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, dressed in a pink chiffon gown,” says the owner of this home on Sydney’s lower north shore, surveying her blush-pink living room. “It’s light, fresh, flowery and so pretty.” Like that Cecil Beaton creation, the room is elegant, romantic and, as with the famous lm, this showstopper represents a dramatic transformation, for the house, the owners and even partly the designers themselves.

After buying the grand, two-storey, six-bedroom brick Federation house in 2014, the owners contacted interior designer Thomas Hamel of Thomas Hamel & Associates and his team of Brendan Guy and Carla Barton to create a new chapter for their young family. “Typical of the grand Federation merchant homes of Sydney, the 3.6-metre ceilings and large gardens had so much potential to create a modern dream home while honouring the original structure,” Thomas says. Luckily, most original features, such as the ornate plaster ceilings, ceiling roses, archways, architraves and leadlights were intact.

But the old part of the house was dark and enclosed, and the owners wanted to ensure that the grand scale of the home did not overwhelm. Because one of the owners had grown up in a rambling old home in postcard-pretty English countryside, this informed the brief. “They required our mixture of fresh and clean interiors with a traditional English feel, an edited Australian approach to a classic home,” explains Thomas.