Styling and Design by Tess Beagley Minted Interiors | Photography by Carrie Young Photography
I’m so happy to share part of our latest Home Tour with you today from our Minted Interiors Coast Project. I'll be bringing you one room - one blog post at a time - and there are FIVE rooms in this contemporary boho beach-side beauty coming your way. BUT if you're impatient like me and want to see glimpses of all five spaces today, then be sure to watch the video at the end of this post for the full home tour. This home has also been published in the latest edition of Australian Country Magazine - you can read the article here.
The exterior is also undergoing a makeover, with a full contemporary landscape re-design, pool and guest house, to be integrated into the existing block.
When I was first invited to visit this home, I was met with the loveliest of home owners – Matt & Kristy – and a worn out, 1980’s family home in a spectacular location, right on the coast in Geraldton WA (interior 'Before' images at the bottom of this post). When I say right on the coast, I mean their front lawn quite literally runs into the dunes and beach, with spectacular sweeping views of ocean, giving this property some serious wow factor. The sound of the waves crashing and smell of salty sea air brought back many fond childhood memories for me growing up by the beach and - as I came to see during my time working in this house - Matt and Kristy's three beautiful kids Riley, Evie and Charlie are living the amazing childhood coastal lifestyle that many Australians love so much.
The first room tour from this amazing home, is this space - the Adult Entertaining + Retreat Zone.
An inbuilt mini-bar design enables easy entertaining, creating a compact storage space for drinks and nibbles when entertaining and a streamlined closed cupboard when not in use.
After some work with Kristy to identify their preferred style and preferences, we settled with a contemporary coastal boho style interior for their home, to suit their location and family lifestyle.
One of the things I love the most about Australian interiors is our understanding and appreciation of uncontrived, down to earth interiors and our connection to the outdoors - Australian Coastal interiors are no exception. Australians appreciate less formal settings (not to be mistaken for lower quality) than our American counter-parts for example, where Hamptons is a formal coastal style all about grandeur and luxury. Thanks to our outdoorsy lifestyles and laid-back values, Aussies usually avoid formality in their interiors but rather value interior settings that feel more relaxed and genuine. Although this space was designed to feel luxurious and high-quality to cater to an entertaining + retreat brief, I also set out to maintain the relaxed uncontrived integrity of the Australian Coastal style.
The Adult’s Entertaining + Retreat Zone is on the top level of this home. The floor plan of this level was reworked to include a Master Bedroom, Walk-In-Robe, Ensuite, Lounge/Entertaining Zone and Office. The main practical function of the Adult’s Entertaining + Retreat Zone, is to offer a casually comfortable setting in Matt & Kristy's chosen boho coastal style, where they could entertain friends on the weekends and enjoy a calming, relaxed space to escape the kids and chill out during the week.
After creating a colour and material palette to reflect the coastal style I was hoping to achieve, I worked with Kristy to finalise the Minted Interiors digital design concept below - you can see how the design (after a few tweaks) translated into the real interior in the following photo.
These pre-start visuals are such a great tool to give clients the confidence they need to lock in their final selection and as you can see, they were a great help for this particular project.
Once the design was finalised, it was time start the material installation and order all of the furniture and decor items. I was able to offer Kristy her selection of furniture and décor at exclusive pricing, thanks to the amazing Australian designers and suppliers we have affiliations with here at Minted Interiors. Renovation budgets can often blow out, so planning well, along with access to industry discounts can save you thousands on each project.
The entry to any room is your first opportunity to create an impression and give visitors a sense of excitement and anticipation. It's also the best place to set the style and tone of the room giving visitors an insight into what to expect in the space beyond. For the Adult Entertaining + Retreat Zone, the stairwell and landing are the first point of contact, so this area presented a great opportunity to play with colour and material in an effort to introduce the boho coastal style we wanted to create for this space
To instantly establish the laid back casual feeling associated with coastal interiors, we opted for cladded walls with timber panelling in the entry. I then combined natural materials (guided by the digital material palette) and plants, with a calming Navy (Dulux Snapshot painted by Hopkinsons Painting) and white colour palette to create drama and a refined sentiment. This really sets the scene for the upstairs floor and has a beautiful, breezy feel to it.
The oversized mirror by WestElm brings light into the stairwell and heightens the sense of drama and anticipation as you walk up the stairs, with its glimpse of the Adult Entertaining + Retreat zone. The timber floor, rattan pendant light by HK Living via Granite Lane, Marigold floor rug by Armadillo & Co , the pot by Pop + Scott and the bench seat by Green Cathedral all add natural elements and materials to the zone further strengthening the coastal aesthetic.
The artwork 'Ocean Breeze' by The Art & Framing Company positioned on the landing sets the tone for a contemporary, calming zone.
Coastal style interiors can so often take an undesirable cliche direction (something we definitely wanted to avoid here!) and if you’re an Australian reading this, I’m pretty certain you would’ve stepped into many a cliché coastal interior. That ‘Beach Shack’ sign hanging on the door, the glass bowls full of shells, the lighthouse figurine, maybe even - dare I say it - a dolphin motif or two! These very literal 'beachy' decor items can so often cheapen a space and make everything feel overly contrived. To achieve a refined high-end beach-side style for this home, my focus was on creating a breezy summery feeling, using design, colours, textures and materials, rather than getting bogged down with 'beach' decor.
Australians really 'get' our beach lifestyle, so it's no wonder that our Australian design industry produces some of the most relevant and stunning pieces for coastal interiors. All of the pieces selected for this project bring with them beautiful Australian design, which create a feeling of integrity and an uncontrived casual tone that Australian interiors are so well known for.
The goal for this project was to create a sense of calm and peace in a coastal aesthetic, so it was necessary to practice restraint with colour. To capture a truly coastal style an interior colour and material palette should be guided by the natural beach-side environment. White walls and timber flooring are a great start, with textured, grounded and unpretentious materials like jute, linen, rattan, leather, timber and raw stone used to build the neutral palette before layering a small amount of coastal landscape inspired colours (mainly pops of navy in this case). This neutral approach and focus on texture creates a relevant sea-side vibe which has a calming affect, allowing your eyes to move around the room without distraction.
To cater to the relaxed, high quality brief I selected Australian designed GlobeWest furniture pieces in this space including the coffee table, occasional chair, buffet and sofa. Comfort and ample seating in a laid back style were really important for this project, so I opted for the Vittorria Iris GlobeWest sofa in an eight seat component configuration. As some of you know, I have this sofa in my own home (in a different configuration) - I love that you can select different components to suit the size and shape of your space. The fabric has stain resistant technology built in and the covers are also removable so they're easy to whip off and throw through the wash after any spills - perfect for entertaining and family life.
I offer Furniture Selection Packages for your home and organise orders for customers all over Australia, so if you're in the process of selecting furniture and would like a little style, pricing and selection help, email me at tess@mintedinteriors.com for more info.
Spence & Lyda are the designers behind the beautiful rattan feature pendants hanging over the corner of the sofa, while the 'Atlas' floor rug is by Armadillo & Co. The rattan wall hanging by Marmoset Found and the cushions are a selection from some of my Australian textile design favourites - Losari, Sage & Clare, Linen + More , plant foliage by Botanical Den and tribal necklace from Mint Interior Design. Although these pieces are Australian designed, as a combined collection, they give a subtle nod to the bohemian beach-side style aesthetic - referencing far flung countries and travel - a typical characteristic of boho interiors.
Matt and Kristy are so dedicated to creating an idyllic and easy lifestyle for their growing family, by giving this worn out beauty a new lease on life - something that has been so apparent in their complete commitment to the design process. Working with genuine and down to earth people who generously show complete faith in my design and styling skills, has been such a rewarding experience for me as a designer. With a new guest house and renovated kitchen zone planned, I'm pleased to say that our work together is not quite done.. In the meantime I hope you enjoyed this room tour - keep your eyes peeled for the next room tour coming very soon!
If you would like some help with your next interior project, please have a look at our Services Page and email me at tess@mintedinteriors.com I would love to hear about your next project.
Tess x
Flooring, Curtains + Plantation Shutters by Choices Flooring Geraldton | Cabinetry by PS Chesters | Concrete Benchtops By Geraldton Granite Construction | Artwork Framing by Colour Decor
HOME TOUR VIDEO by Dragonfly Media:
Before Photos:
