darlinghurst apartment

The Republic ll building in Darlinghurst was designed by Burley Katon Halliday (BKH) and was built in 2000 on the old Sargents Pies site. Iconic, stylish and just a short walk to the CBD, this is an exceptional place to live if it's inner Sydney living you're after.

The Client’s brief was to completely revamp and refurnish the apartment, removing a truly awful crimson, glossy kitchen fit-out for starters! This apartment is long and narrow and while the bedrooms on the entrance level are flooded with natural light, the kitchen which is at the back of the downstairs level, is not. So it made sense to install a new kitchen that would reflect light, not absorb it.

We went with a warm shade of white for the cupboard fronts, and a beautiful marble bench top to match the original bathroom shelving, and the Clients were very happy with the result. Note that there are no fussy cupboard handles, a pet hate of mine! The original timber floor was quite a golden colour and was in bad need of resurfacing. Rather than just revarnish it, we went for a more contemporary Japan black, which strikes a dramatic contrast with al the white. A lovely semi gloss finish gives the floor a warm and soft lustre. It’s so much fun when a client puts total faith in you - and shopping at Jardan Furniture is a pleasure I like to relive over and over!

We mixed up the glories of Jardan by adding a beautiful 18th century french farm table and old green metal cinema dining chairs, a beautiful richly coloured hide for the floor, and to top it all off, a Kate Mackenzie original portrait.Art is so integral to good design - it can quite literally make or break the impact of any room. I discovered Kate Mackenzie in NZ and have had great delight in sourcing fabulous works by her for a number of my clients, not to mention for myself. Check her out in the artist section above.Moving upstairs, the bedrooms are quite small and so we avoided cluttering them with excess furniture, opting to let the linen and the feature wallpaper be the wow factor. The wallpaper was sourced from Wallpaper Trader, a fabulous new agent in Australia representing all the coolest papers from around the globe. These two designs were printed and shipped to us from Finland, and were hung for us by a Russian woman who could quite possibly have worked a second job as a super model! Incongruous!For me, beautiful linen is a must for every bed. If the budget stretches to Society Limonta from Italy, then great - the colours and quality are amazing. But increasingly, new suppliers are opening here and the choices in colour are fabulous for a lot less outlay. We love dark and moody for winter, light and fresh in summer, so more affordable brands make it easier to collect more colours!

Photographed by India Hartford Davis