Cool change

This year’s Resene Colour Home Awards winners brought subtle colour and a dose of character back to an Oamaru villa

Fiona Ralph

Tessa Simpson never imagined her character-filled Oamaru home would take out the top prize in the Resene Colour Home Awards. The long-time reader of Your Home and Garden has always followed the competition and decided to enter when she and husband Tyler finished painting their home last year. Tessa could hardly believe it when she received the email saying that the home’s calming, cohesive colour palette had won the couple $5000 in prize money.

The stylish blue and grey tones Tessa chose for the interior, along with the striking monochrome exterior, are a welcome change from the “sea of beige and yellow” (plus one pink bedroom) which dominated when the family moved in five years ago.

“When we first moved in, I neutralised everything,” explains Tessa. A few years later, when the boys were both toddlers, “I decided to change it and make it a bit more exciting.”

Tessa, a makeup artist, has a background in wedding styling and says interiors are an extension of that. “I’ve always enjoyed interiors. I like playing around with styling things and I like art and colour.” She painted the bedrooms herself but enlisted local painters A1 Decorating for the rest of the work.

This has been the couple’s first renovation, as their previous home was a new-build, and Tessa says she prefers a house with character. “It was quite different coming into an older house and changing things.”