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The wine bar area is the perfect place for Meg to listen to her favourite classical music while drinking a glass of Hunter Valley shiraz with friends. The walls are painted in SJW Igneous by Resene, a custom SJW colour (use Resene Grey Friars to get this look), and the ceiling and trims are in Resene Alabaster. The hallway is in Resene Lusty designed to emulate the wall colour seen in many art galleries.
Kate St James and Catherine Whitting’s design won a Resene Total Colour Residential Interior Award at the Resene Total Colour Awards. The design is called Galleria Sanctum because it’s designed to be both a sanctuary and an art gallery for homeowner Meg. The lounge is painted in colours to highlight her collection of indigenous Australian art with Resene Alabaster painted on the left wall, cabinetry and ceiling and SJW Igneous by Resene, a custom SJW colour (use Resene Grey Friars to get the look), on the right wall.
Catherine Whitting analysed each of Meg’s artworks to find the perfect wall colour. She chose SJW Igneous by Resene, a custom SJW colour (use Resene Grey Friars to get this look) in the living room to complement the white, black and red artwork Hairstring by First Nations Australian, Judy Napangardi Watson. Catherine and Kate chose the hallway colour, Resene Lusty to tie in with the red in the artwork and red accessories.
The master bedroom is painted in ReseneSpaceCote Low Sheen tinted to Resene Kudos with the ceiling and trims in Resene Alabaster. The colour scheme is inspired by the deep blues of the icebergs of Antarctica.
The sight of the rural sunrise scene in Resene Wallpaper Collection P010-VD4 is a tranquil way for guests to start the day. Resene Atomic on the adjacent walls is the perfect colour match to the wallpaper and ties in with the frosty white Resene Alabaster ceiling. You can create your own mural scenes of favourite places you have visited by loading your high res image into the Resene WallPrint programme, www.resene.com/wallprint.
The walls and back of a wardrobe are painted in a contrasting colour to make them pop. Meg’s library has walls painted in ReseneSpaceCote Low Sheen tinted to Resene Timekeeper to make her book collection shine.
Fire and ice: The inspiration for an art and travel lover’s small but vibrant home
There are few moments in your life that can be described as pure, unbridled awe. For Meg, one moment was seeing the pure white and intense cerulean and deep blues on the icebergs in Pleneau Bay, Antarctica. The memory of icebergs floating in the ocean like ghostly sculptures was so visceral it felt like it had left an imprint on her DNA, and a photograph doesn’t quite do it justice, so she turned to Resene.
Meg hadn’t expected to be describing this feeling to Catherine Whitting and Kate St James while they discussed the ideas for her home renovation. Then, her Sydney apartment was an insipid clotted-cream colour, and she required the St James Whitting interior design duo to whip it into shape.
The vibe the oatmeal walls gave her home was the opposite of the Antarctic colours. It sucked the life out of her vibrant art collection, which includes Australian Indigenous artists such as Yannima Tommy Watson and Elizabeth Nyumi.
The wine bar area is the perfect place for Meg to listen to her favourite classical music while drinking a glass of Hunter Valley shiraz with friends. The walls are painted in SJW Igneous by Resene, a custom SJW colour (use Resene Grey Friars to get this look), and the ceiling and trims are in Resene Alabaster. The hallway is in Resene Lusty designed to emulate the wall colour seen in many art galleries.
Kate St James and Catherine Whitting’s design won a Resene Total Colour Residential Interior Award at the Resene Total Colour Awards. The design is called Galleria Sanctum because it’s designed to be both a sanctuary and an art gallery for homeowner Meg. The lounge is painted in colours to highlight her collection of indigenous Australian art with Resene Alabaster painted on the left wall, cabinetry and ceiling and SJW Igneous by Resene, a custom SJW colour (use Resene Grey Friars to get the look), on the right wall.
“On the cream walls, the artworks had lost a lot of their drama and power. Colour felt like it leached off into the walls. I needed colourful walls to bring them back to life,” says Meg.
Catherine and Kate are advocates of sustainable design and use waterborne Resene paints in their homes thanks to their low VOC (volatile organic compounds). The duo have their own Resene colour range in Australia, the SJW Elementals Collection coloured by Resene. Their design ethos is to create homes for their clients and their psychology or, as Catherine puts it, “we create wellness in an interior space and also wellness in their headspace”.
Catherine Whitting analysed each of Meg’s artworks to find the perfect wall colour. She chose SJW Igneous by Resene, a custom SJW colour (use Resene Grey Friars to get this look) in the living room to complement the white, black and red artwork Hairstring by First Nations Australian, Judy Napangardi Watson. Catherine and Kate chose the hallway colour, Resene Lusty to tie in with the red in the artwork and red accessories.
They decided to use the icy Antarctic blues Meg had described as part of their plan for the apartment. It posed one challenge: the cool colours Meg had described were a stark contrast to the scorched earth of the Australian Outback, the inspiration and homeland of many of the indigenous Australians whose artworks are part of Meg’s collection.
“You wouldn’t normally associate the Antarctic with Indigenous Australian art or the coldest part of the earth with the desert, so our challenge was to embrace these ideas in an elegant way to make Meg feel a connection to her home through colour,” says Catherine.
The master bedroom is painted in ReseneSpaceCote Low Sheen tinted to Resene Kudos with the ceiling and trims in Resene Alabaster. The colour scheme is inspired by the deep blues of the icebergs of Antarctica.
Catherine and Kate designed the home to be divided between private and public spaces by colour. The bedrooms and private areas are in vibrant Resene blues. Meg wakes up each morning in the master bedroom immersed in Resene Kudos with an ensuite that includes a bathtub resembling an iceberg and a vanity not unlike the body of a penguin. The guest bedroom is just as cool, with grey-blue Resene Atomic on the walls paired with a breath-taking blue hillside mural, Resene Wallpaper Collection P010-VD4. The mural reminds Meg of Tuscany, another one of her favourite destinations.
“The bedroom feels nourishing for me, and the ensuite has resonances of Antarctica. It’s a very peaceful, calm place to be. The spare bedroom is just as restful and guests wake up to the hills of Tuscany with beautiful blues and greens – relaxing and restful,” says Meg.
The sight of the rural sunrise scene in Resene Wallpaper Collection P010-VD4 is a tranquil way for guests to start the day. Resene Atomic on the adjacent walls is the perfect colour match to the wallpaper and ties in with the frosty white Resene Alabaster ceiling. You can create your own mural scenes of favourite places you have visited by loading your high res image into the Resene WallPrint programme, www.resene.com/wallprint.
Catherine and Kate chose a warm red, charcoal grey and white colour scheme designed to function as an art gallery for the home’s entertaining areas. “With the original insipid wall colour, the art didn’t sing, and it never fitted the space,” says Catherine.
“We analysed every piece of artwork for its colour properties, and the wall colours were chosen to enhance the artworks,” adds Kate.
Resene Lusty in the hallway was chosen to match the red line in Hairstringby First Nations Australian, Judy Napangardi Watson, creating a visual cue to help navigate through the rest of the home.
In the lounge, SJW Igneous, a custom colour from the St James Whitting Elemental Collection by Resene (use Resene Grey Friars to get the look) is part of an analogous grey scheme with Resene Alabaster on the ceiling and joinery highlighting the punchy pink artwork My Country by Yannima Tommy Watson and the rusty orange work (untitled) by EubenaNampitjin.
The walls and back of a wardrobe are painted in a contrasting colour to make them pop. Meg’s library has walls painted in ReseneSpaceCote Low Sheen tinted to Resene Timekeeper to make her book collection shine.
“Many big galleries worldwide use red or green walls to make the artwork come to life, and we wanted to create that gallery experience. We used ReseneSpaceCote Flat on the walls as the matte paint doesn’t reflect the light, which is ideal for artwork.”
As well as loving art, Meg is a fan of classical music, soft jazz and wine and Kate and Catherine designed a seating area especially for enjoying both. It features the custom colour SJW Igneous (use Resene Grey Friars to get this look) on three walls, creating a cosy space perfect for a glass of Australian shiraz or New Zealand pinot noir with friends while listening to good music.
Even when she’s not entertaining, Meg says simply coming home to her colourful home is a treat, and she loves seeing her favourite pieces shine. “I love just walking around from room to room. It gives me such pleasure to see my artwork nourished by the walls. It feels like my art has a home too.”
design Kate St James and Catherine Whitting www.stjameswhitting.com
images Marian Riabic
Top tip: When opting for dark and dramatic colours, keep in mind that you may need to adjust your lighting to suit. Use lamps, accent lighting and dimmer switches to help create the right mood. It’s also common to think of black as being straight black, but in fact, there are many variations to choose from with undertones of blue, red, green and yellow as well as variants slightly softened with white. Always test your black with the rest of your palette in natural daylight and also at night to ensure all your undertones harmonise well with each other. Lower sheen finished such as Resene SpaceCote Flat will help to bring out the moodiness in darker colours.
Published: 11 Apr 2024
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