YSG creates welcome to the funhouse feeling in Australian holiday home

Interiors studio YSG used glossy tiles, saturated colours and plenty of patterned wallpaper to create the interior of Plantasia, a colourful holiday home in a 1990s building.

Located near Australia's New South Wales coast, the six-bedroom home occupies a mock-colonial building that previously had an uninviting interior.

"It was a cavernous mock-Colonial house built in the 1990s where walls were unified by cold white shades and jarring right angles everywhere, so it needed to be softened and not just via plump soft furnishings," YSG director Yasmine Ghoniem told Dezeen.

To soften the interior and emphasise the holiday home's connection to nature, YSG decorated its walls with plenty of flora and fauna-patterned wallpaper.

"They were after a 'welcome to the funhouse' feeling the moment the front door swings opens," Ghoniem said.

"It's nestled amongst rolling hills sprinkled with citrus gardens, so they wanted to enhance this connection to nature indoors."

The studio fully gutted the bathrooms, as well as the kitchen and lounge – though YSG kept the fireplace, which it widened and covered in plastel-couloured and warm red, glossy tiles.

Striped fabrics were used generously in the home to create an eye-catching juxtaposition with the floral walls.

The designer also added curvilinear shapes throughout the house to give it a soft, inviting feel.

"Examples include the elongated arched door we added that leads from the dining room to the sleeping quarters, and the ornately carved blue cabinets in the entrance vestibule inspired by the Victorian-era," Ghoniem said.

"We also designed an undulating timber base for the kitchen island. In the lounge room, we added a cushioned banquette with rounded returns, and even the joinery throughout the home has bullnose returns rather than flattened planes."

In one of the house's bathrooms, YSG used onyx stone slabs for the open shelving as well as for counters.

"I exaggerated their thickness and gave them a bullnose edge so their Crayola-like scribbled pattern is really visible on the edges that face you," Ghoniem said. "We made them super thick so they didn't get engulfed in the green wallpaper."

This wallpaper is heavily patterned – a theme that is noticeable in the whole house and adds to its fairytale-like feel.

Patterned wallpaper "can add dimensionality to a small space and also instantly create a mood, depending upon the decorative motif it features," Ghoniem explained.

"In this case, the wallpaper features add a fictional feeling to this home – like an other-worldly utopia you'd only possibly visit in your dreams. Why should only kids get to feel that way?"

YSG balanced the patterned walls with more neutral designs in other parts of the house, so that it wouldn't be too overwhelming.

"We balanced the maximalist wallpapered moments that visually link spaces – despite the different patterns on them – with quieter spaces," Ghoniem said.

"That's why the central kitchen and dining area features the neutral walls for a breather. It resets you for your next adventure."

Ghoniem also aimed to tease soft shapes from hard surfaces, a trick that she used in a variety of different ways at Plantasia.

In the living room, a custom-made brown timber credenza "looks like a puddle of melting chocolate with Malteser-like pulls," while the entrance vestibule is decorated with a floor-feature in cork designed to look like an hourglass.

"It's set within caramel-shaded cork that pours into the adjoining rooms," Ghoniem said. "It pushes the escapist theme of being suspended in time from the moment you enter the home."

Other recent projects by YSG include an office for a fashion brand with shimmering mosaics and a Sydney cafe with 1970s-style elements, including cork flooring and carpet-lined seating.

The photography is by Anson Smart.

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