Pop Heart

With Its Breezy, Ever-evolving Aesthetic, This Family’s Cool Yet Casual Centurion Home is a Fitting Reflection of the People Who Live in It
 

- Layla Leiman

A lime-green front door set in charcoal exterior walls makes Mpho and Harald Vackier’s home stand out from the earth-toned houses that surround it in an estate near Irene in Centurion, Gauteng. This bold juxtaposition is characteristic of the double-storey property, which has eclectic design and easygoing family living at its heart.

Previously a process engineer on platinum mines, Mpho switched to interior design to follow her passion and spend more time at home with their son Xavier. Mpho runs her two businesses – Design Peo, an interior-decorating consultancy, and The Urbanative, her product-design studio – out of her home. Fabric swatches, flooring samples and other tools of the trade litter the floor and adorn the walls of her office, reflecting her work and creative process.

The rest of the house, though meticulously neat, is a similar extension of Mpho’s work and the family’s combined personalities. Her client projects demand planning and process but in her own home, Mpho is free to experiment and play, which she does regularly, changing up the house almost every weekend – new scatter cushions in the TV room, a different couch in the living room, a wallpaper ceiling planned for her office sometime soon. The lime-green front door, which was yellow a few weeks ago, might well be pink in the not-too-distant future.