Hidden GEM

A wonderful world of colour is found within the walls of an unassuming 1990s apartment building in one of Melbourne's most stylish suburbs.

- Holly Byrne

For Dijana Moisis, Studio Ora's design director, the renovation of this apartment was rather personal. The interior designer purchased the two-level inner Melbourne property in 2016 with her husband, and was looking for more than just a family-friendly layout from the transformation.

When the couple first stepped inside the industrial apartment that would become their home, Dijana immediately knew it was "the one". "It was rough, really rough," she says, laughing. “But it had great bones. The concrete ceilings, the rawness, the way the balcony opened onto that private courtyard, it all had potential.

I could just see it." For the first four years after they bought it, she simply took notes on how they lived, where the light fell, and which parts of the layout felt most awkward. The biggest challenge? Storage and natural light. "We somehow added five or six metres of storage within the same footprint," she says. "And that internal fluted-glass window in the ensuite, it brought in light and completely changed how the space felt." Designing her own home was harder for Dijana than working for her clients, a sentiment shared widely by designers acting as their own clients.