Juggling Act

Introducing different styles and powerful contrasts into this home’s interior scheme was a gamble that paid off.

This home has had more work than Joan Rivers!” laughs owner Ali Satchell of her Sydney eastern suburbs Federation/Arts and Crafts house that she has redesigned, along with her friend, interior designer and fellow colour appreciator, Tina de Salis. With the friendship and a glorious house all intact, the story behind this transformation is really about the power play of contrast.

The house presents quite the poker face. It’s all demure at the front, playing nicely with everyone else on the street and then, down a little path, it’s as if you boarded a plane blindfolded and stepped off into a jet-set holiday. Tina (who heads up her firm Tina & Louise) and Ali always intended to play their decorating cards within the realms of high contrast. As Ali says “it was a juggling act to integrate the old and the new. We achieved this by selecting tactile, timeless materials and then injecting it with loads of soul. We wanted a home that reflected us and could be filled with all our special things – the treasures we’d collected over the years.”

Melbourne firm B.E Architecture was selected to scope out a new language for the large but underused site while the friends got to work making their high-contrast selections. With the back of the house being at deliberate odds to the front, the furnishings needed to work hard as the common thread.