Sheer curtains add soft texture in this Palm Springs style home

Hi Ash! Thanks for chatting with us about your new renovation, Coffs to Cali. We love your and Simon's Aussie take on the iconic Palm Springs style. What drew you to this style and how did you incorporate it into your beachside reno?

We’ve loved the Palm Springs mid-century modern style for a while. We’re really into the minimal yet design focussed aesthetic that brings the outdoors in! We wanted to incorporate the shapes and colours synonymous with the Palm Springs look in our home, while giving it a distinctly Australian vibe and using a more natural colour palette.

The colour palette you chose is bold and original - and a refreshing change from all white! Could you share your tips for experimenting with colour?

My design background has really influenced our colour choices. People are so afraid of colour these days, but it adds so much personality to a home. Colour can bring mood; transforms how you relax and replenish; and, combined with a lighting design, changes in feeling from morning to evening. Colour gives your home versatility.

We brought in bold colours, but kept things complementary by taking our inspiration from nature and the Great Dividing Range that’s out the back of our house. It’s great to use colour, but our best advice is to create a colour palette and look for the colour story you want to tell. Colours should work together before you put them on the walls.

You both seem to have boundless energy and ideas! How do you stay inspired and tap into your creativity during a build?

Simon is a nature guy - when he’s not renovating, he’s deep diving in the ocean or surfing on the coast. He really lives in the moment and is inspired by nature at every turn. I’m the dreamer and I’m constantly gathering ideas and drawing plans for our next projects. I bring the forward thinking and will be cheekily discussing ideas with Simon for a few months before he thinks it’s his great idea.

We live in a beautiful part of Australia and went on plenty of walks during our renovation. Every penny went into the build; choosing quality time in nature was a good decision for us. It cost us nothing and we got to decompress most days with a bit of fresh air. We got to discuss textures and colour, tile decisions and more, and it felt like a date.

Do you have advice for couples renovating, in terms of communication and staying on the same page throughout a project? It’s obvious you shared a strong vision and worked incredibly as a team.

We both have similar taste when it comes to our renovation projects, so that helps a lot. We don’t agree on everything, but we have a really strong vision for our lifestyle; it keeps us on point and ensures our creative energy isn’t taken up with hard conversations. Forget the vision boards; they are important, but your house needs to be an embodiment of who you are and your future self. Picture yourself in ten years' time and what you want to have achieved; your space is going to be the resting place for your dreams and the starting point for those conversations and life decisions. Think about that before you think about anything else, and the rest will come.

I work from home remotely and the separation between work and home needs to feel immediate at the end of the working day. We personally value music, scent, mood and nature to do that. We used soundproof materials so we can play loud music without the neighbours hearing; designed lighting that dim across the whole house; chose colours that transform the space in the evening; and furnished the open plan living-dining with natural plush textures that let you sink into relax mode.

Also we completely trust each other. Renovating is hard and not for everyone; you have to divide and conquer on decisions and having a partner that can choose well and on behalf of both of you is really unique. We also laugh a lot, so when things get tough we just make a joke of it.

Your bespoke designer curtains are DIY from start to finish. Talk us through the process you went through, from ordering free samples through to DIY installation.

Wow, our curtains - where do we start! We had a really strong vision to let the outdoors in, which meant large scale windows. We wanted to furnish our windows in a bespoke way; retain maximum natural light; and add softness and calm to the space, especially given our minimal and sculptural furniture.

We ordered fabric samples from DIY Blinds early on in the planning stage of our renovation and then narrowed it down to two linen samples. We took the fabric samples with us to select the windows and exterior cladding colours and it was love at first sight; everything matched really well together.

From then it was pretty simple. We measured up and emailed through some images to the DIY Blinds team. We could have ordered straight away, but emailing the team gave us confidence that our selections were correct. Given we have a raked ceiling line, we needed to check the puddled finish and curtain fall with someone who knew a bit more than us! Delivery and install were the easiest parts of all. Everything arrived in record time, came perfectly packaged and took five minutes to install. The online installation guides are so helpful, but the process is pretty foolproof.

The sheer linen blend curtains you chose from our Allusion range filter light beautifully. How important to you are natural fibres and texture?

We’re all about nature in our house. We selected a natural fibre because it gave us privacy from the outside world, but filtered light beautifully in the home. We could tell that the Allusion range was going to have the versatility we needed to keep things private, while the natural finish and raw texture in the home gave us that vacation feeling!

Do you have any advice about how to customise curtains for raked ceilings like yours?

If you’re ordering custom window furnishings, think about enclosing the track for a seamless finish and always add a puddle! We talked through our ideas with the DIY Blinds team, who were so helpful from start to finish and gave us confidence in our decisions.

What can we look forward to seeing from Ash and Simon in 2021?

Good question! We have been dreaming up two projects: a Japanese inspired weekender; and an A-frame on some land (check out @aframekangaroovalley on Instagram for some inspo). Before we get into it though, Simon will be doing a lot of surfing to make up for all the weekends he missed out on during 2020.