The Big Easy

Gigi and Matt’s laid-back take on beach-house living involves jet black, freshest white, chalky greys – and pops of yellow and blue that add a seaside vibe.

- Jo Leevers

When a neighbour heard that Gigi Sutherland and her partner Matt Sellers were renovating this East Sussex beach house, she was delighted. ‘She said, “Ooh, you can do everything in blue and white stripes – very nautical!”,’ Gigi recalls. But the end result of this ripped-out and reinvented house on the coast couldn’t be further from that cliché.

Instead, this is a home seen through a strong black and white filter, but with textures turned up to the max. There’s the rawness of builder’s merchant materials, metal light cables straight out of your school gym and a worn carpentry bench reborn as a kitchen surface. Alongside jet-black and chalkygrey walls (with a colour-poppy toddler’s swing that really should come in bigger sizes), they add up to a refreshingly cool version of beachside living. Less stripes, but bags of substance.

‘It’s a look that chimes with us – we didn’t want it too overworked,’ says Gigi. However, plenty of the style solutions, from walls in OSB (that’s the bigged-up chipboard) to poured concrete flooring and industrial-vibe plumbing, were also all jobs that could be done and dusted over a long weekend.