LIVING COLOUR

Tiny scraps from its past helped inform the multi-coloured future of a Napier cottage that had faded from glory

- Text Debbie Harrison

Colour beams from every corner of Ingrid and Shay Russell's Napier cottage - on the kitchen cabinets, the letterbox, the fireplace and even inside the bedroom closets. In fact, there are 18 different paint colours in this home - but you wouldn't expect anything less from an interior designer who studied colour psychology.

However, while this home might seem like an exuberant expression of modern creativity, Ingrid found the playful palette by looking at the past.

Built in 1940 for Thora Mitchell in the final chapter of Hawke's Bay's art deco era, the home was modest in size and rich in charm. Its pitched roof, rather than the flat style typical of the period, makes it an architectural outlier. Originally a one-bedroom plastered cottage, the house gained a second bedroom in 1947. In the 1990s, a hallway was built to connect the main home with the old wooden toolshed out back. Today, it includes three bedrooms, a hobby room for Ingrid (the former toolshed), and 110sqm of colour-drenched living.

When Ingrid and Shay bought the house in the summer of 2021, its original vibrancy had been dulled by decades of neglect and outdated updates.

“It was cosy, but it felt like being underwater,” says Ingrid, recalling the dark periwinkle walls and black shag carpet. Even at midday, light struggled to fill the rooms.

The back garden was a jungle of ivy and fallen trees, with weeds towering overhead. As the couple cleared it, they uncovered relics from the past: fossils, glass inkwells, antique china fragments and horseshoes.